A new research snapshot from the Utah Women and Leadership Project found women perform more unpaid labor than men, and that labor is often unnoticed or undervalued.
The research focused on four types of unpaid labor: childcare, caring for the elderly, household management, and emotional labor, which involves noticing and managing what needs to be done.
It’s “the work that makes all other work possible,” according to an Atlantic article, and has a massive impact on families, communities, and nations. According to Oxfam, the monetary value of women’s unpaid work worldwide is estimated to be $10.8 trillion each year.
The disparity in labor
Though the level of disparity differs depending on the type, women across the board take on more unpaid labor than men.
Overall, Utah women spend 5.55 hours per day in unpaid work versus 3.22 hours for men, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data from 2015-2019.
That same data found Utah women with children in the household spend an average of 1.9 hours a day providing primary “active” care, versus 1.29 hours from men.
In a survey from 2023, about half of Utah women reported they do household work every day, versus 15.7% of men. Notably, the gap in how much time women spend on housework versus men has narrowed in recent years, according to research by the UWLP.
Two-thirds of those who engage in unpaid elder care in Utah are also women, with half of them working full time and 23% reporting they spent more than 20 hours a week in care work.
Why the disparity exists
Unpaid labor is of special note in Utah, which has the largest family size and the largest share of women who work part-time in the nation.
“In a household with a partner who works full time ... the assumption is you’re there, you don’t have other scheduled things to do, therefore you can engage in unpaid care work,” said Kolene Anderson, associate director of the Utah Women and Leadership Project.
A lack of affordable and accessible childcare can also make it more difficult for women to adjust how much unpaid childcare they take on. Late last year, the Utah Women and Leadership Project published research on Utah’s “childcare crisis,” which has left many Utah parents with little to no childcare options.
Utah also has the youngest median age of marriage for both men and women and Utah mothers are younger at first birth than the national average, which Anderson said also impacts unpaid labor.
“The research shows that major life transitions that occur when a woman is younger have more influence over the amount of unpaid work that she will assume over her lifetime,” Anderson said.
“If Utahns are marrying younger and women are having fewer years where they're in the workforce,” Anderson continued, “no wonder Utah women have lower levels of retirement savings as well.”
Other factors include cultural values, social norms around gender, the COVID-19 pandemic, and race and ethnicity — Black and Hispanic women report the highest rates of unpaid caregiving.
The effect of unpaid labor on women
When women take the brunt of unpaid labor, it can impact paid labor they might pursue.
According to the Pew Research Center, women with caregiving responsibilities who engage in paid employment often face greater professional setbacks because of their care work. This includes taking more time off and refusing promotions.
A fact sheet from American Progress found that women are five to eight times more likely to have their employment affected by unpaid care work than men.
Women who only engage in unpaid labor may also have more financial vulnerability later in life, especially in cases such as divorce.
Women with a large share of unpaid work are also vulnerable to worse physical, emotional, and mental health. Stress, depression, and feelings of isolation are especially common among those caring for the elderly.
Solving the problem
The research snapshot had several recommendations for improving the state of unpaid labor for women, including creating support networks and providing coping skills, problem-solving strategies, and resilience training for unpaid care workers of all genders.
“That support structure is critical for unpaid care workers who are doing so in more isolated environments,” Anderson said.
It also urged companies to promote work-family balance for all employees.
“This is not an encouragement for workplaces to create a culture of flexibility only for women,” Anderson said, “because that just perpetuates more of the unpaid care work happening by women.”
Other recommendations included doing more research on unpaid work and sharing the results, educating the public on unpaid labor and its value, increasing access to affordable and flexible childcare, and promoting more balanced divisions of labor within households.
“As a society, we can come up with some pretty creative solutions to make sure that we take care of the people who are taking care of those of us that are vulnerable and need that care,” Anderson said.
Anderson also noted that she doesn’t expect unpaid labor to become paid or fully outsourced; rather, the goal is to make sure that work is better valued and distributed, and to give women more flexibility and options when it comes to unpaid labor.
Most importantly, though, Anderson said she hoped for unpaid labor to be recognized as the essential work it is.
“In my ideal world, the stay-at-home mom who is returning to work after many years would include on her resume the work that she did at home,” Anderson said. “And no one would bat an eye at it because it would be recognized as a valuable skill and personal development and valued as such.”
