Unpaid work – the missing link in the gender gap

Work is a very important factor in health. Generally, employment benefits health through material and psychosocial factors such as the ability to pay for food and a home, and feelings of self-worth. These benefits vary by stress-related factors such as security, pay, hours and autonomy. All this is nothing new. But employment might be only half of the story when it comes to understanding work and health.

Unpaid work has been largely ignored, but some of the stress of work can also be found in unpaid labour, and unpaid labour might influence health indirectly through its impact on employment outcomes and opportunities.

Labour market inequalities

The Labour Force Survey shows us that employment rates for men and women have been converging for years.

Women continue to do more unpaid work than men in all countries, and are still more likely than men to reduce their work hours in response to care responsibilities, and to work in low paid and precarious sectors. Women also continue to earn less than men and are under-represented in decision-making roles. Gender inequality in the amounts of unpaid labour that men and women do is thought to contribute to these differences.

Some of the figures we have, for example, are:

• average weekly work hours are 35.3 for men, 27.8 for women
• the gender pay gap was 13.1% in April 2024; 7% for full-time employees
• 69% of low paid earners (earning below two-thirds of hourly median income) are women and women are over-represented in precarious and low paid sectors
• 60% of jobs paying below the real living wage are held by women.

Also, while women make up 51% of the UK population, we account for 40% of MPs in parliament, and 44.7% of FTSE 100 directors (but only 30.5% of those in the 50 largest private companies).

Unpaid work

As long ago as 2014, the OECD has recognised that “unpaid care work is the missing link in explaining gender gaps in labour market outcomes”, and more recently the Women’s Budget Group Commission for a Gender-Equal Economy also recognised unpaid care work as being at the heart of gender inequalities.

Before we look at some research, it would probably be helpful to define what we mean by unpaid care work: essentially, all unpaid services provided within a household for its members, including care of people and housework. Care might mean everyday childcare or the usually unpaid help or assistance given to family members or friends with mental and physical health conditions, disabilities, and addictions.

Understanding Society can be a good resource for studying its effects, because the survey regularly asks two questions:

• Is there anyone living with you who is sick, disabled, or whom you look after or give special help to?
• Do you provide some regular service or help for any sick, disabled or elderly person not living with you?

Parenthood

Mention of childcare is important, though, because becoming a parent continues to be a point at which gender relations are reset in households, with men still typically becoming the main ‘breadwinner’ and women more likely to move to part-time work, and to increase their unpaid work in the home.

Some of the research I’ve done with Understanding Society data has found that, to achieve gender equality in divisions of work, one person in a couple having egalitarian views is not enough in the face of slow-to-change gender norms. A shared egalitarian ideology is required. Even then, in the two largest egalitarian groups we identified (both of which involved dual-earners), women still did more domestic work than men.

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