The world has witnessed massive upheavals over the past three decades. The exponential increase in globalization has, by extension, triggered a ripple effect on politics, economy, health, innovation, and most importantly, food security and climate change. Then major economic recessions and COVID-19 happened, which planted severe dents across economies. While entire populations as a whole are still in the throes of politico-economic certainties, war and climate injustice to name a few; the main brunt is borne mainly by vulnerable groups and especially women and girls.
In consistent and continuous – albeit a now rhetorical – conversation, conflict, climate change, violence, principal participation in informal economy as well as lack of access to modern, right-skilling development through formal education are some of the key barriers to improving women’s and girls’ socio-political and economic lives and at the same time upliftment of societies as a whole.
While progress has faced many impediments, there has been growth as well. That said, these gains are not only uneven, they also differ region to region. According to a recently published UN Women report titled Women’s Rights in Review 30 Years After Beijing, the proportion of women in parliament has doubled since 1995 though three out of four parliamentarians are still men today. “Globally, the proportion of women has increased from 50 percent to 65 percent, but 277 million more men than women used the Internet in 2024.” There is an increase in the global share of women receiving social protection as it rose by one third from 2010 to 2023 with at least one social protection benefit; about two billion women and girls received no social protection benefit at all in 2023.
Education-wise, girls’ participation in primary and tertiary levels are higher than boys. In a UBS Switzerland AG and UBS Financial Services Inc. report titled Gender Lens Investment, The State of Women in 2025, Antonia Sariyska, Sustainable and Impact Investing Strategist, CIO Amantia Muhedini, Sustainable and Impact Investing Strategist, CIO state: “At the turn of this century, 79 percent of girls and 85 percent of boys globally completed primary school education. In 2023—the latest available data from the World Bank and UNESCO—the gap had closed, with 88 percent of girls and 89 percent of boys completing the first stage of their education. Progress in tertiary education was even more significant for women: only 19 percent of both men and women globally enrolled in tertiary (university) education in 2000. Twenty-three years later, 46 percent of women and 40 percent of men enrolled in higher education.”
Courtesy: UBS Switzerland AG and UBS Financial Services Inc. report titled Gender Lens Investment, The State of Women in 2025
Even though school-going girls surpass boys in many regions in terms of upper secondary completion rates, Central and Southern Asia as well as Sub-Saharan Africa lag behind with 59.5 million girls missing out on these fundamental rights.
Girls are more likely to face increased risks of either dropping out of school with less likelihood of return or being prevented from going in the first place due to barriers such as child marriage, harassment, care work and more.
In the United Nations Children’s Fund, UN Women and Plan International, Girl Goals: What has changed for girls? Adolescent girls’ rights over 30 years, UNICEF, New York, 2025, report, Elizabeth, 19, Malawi and Lovanchor, 20, Papua New Guinea Members of the UNICEF Global Girl Leaders Advisory Group (GGLAG) State: “In Fiji and the Pacific, girls and women are more affected by many issues, including climate change, lack of access to education, health services and resources, and unequal gender roles. They are significantly excluded from opportunities for empowerment and leadership, both critical to building community resilience.”
Adding, “In Malawi, the highest HIV incidence rates are among adolescent girls due to limited access to services and entrenched social norms. Many girls struggle to access secondary education due to limited schools, poverty and long distances. Early marriages, pregnancies and lack of menstrual hygiene facilities contribute to high dropout and absenteeism, and adolescent girls are vulnerable to various forms of violence – physical, emotional, and sexual abuse – at school and home.”
One of the key barriers to women and girl’s economic upliftment is care work which is still considered a woman’s prerogative. With a disproportionate amount of time spent on unpaid care work, the impact on girls’ education turns out to be massive.
A 2024 study conducted by Plan International Real Choices, Real Lives, reveals that girls spend 160 million hours more per day on household chores than boys their age with girls between the age of five to 14 globally spending 550 million hours every day on domestic care work. Nine hours per week are spent by 14 year old girls on average when it comes to care responsibilities in total. And, by the age of 19, girls spend between three to four hours on domestic and care work.
“Education is key to breaking the cycle of poverty and gender inequality, but the heavy responsibility of unpaid care work is preventing many girls from attending and succeeding at school” says Dr Kit Catterson, Research Manager at Plan International.
On top of this and at the cusp of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, experts note that even formal education will go obsolete as massive technological advancements take hold and change the dynamics of our lives and work. About 65 percent of children entering primary schools today will work in job categories that don’t yet exit , states a World Economic Forum’s Future of Job report. But what does it actually mean for women and girls who; while possessing a higher “proportion of graduate and under graduate degrees”; still lag behind in STEM fields, due to not just societal and self imposed confidence gaps but also access, opportunities and glass ceilings?
According to the UBS report: “The Fourth Industrial Revolution, and trends like the energy transition and AI innovation not only necessitates a focus on STEM and life-long learning, but it also requires new ways of thinking about education in specialized fields, with apprenticeship-based models becoming more prevalent. Women are under-represented in most apprenticeship programs according to the ILO, although the gap varies by country and sector.”
Looking closely, lack of access to education, career and other opportunities as well as economic disenfranchisement also arise due to a woman’s principal participation in the informal care sector. From experiencing the ‘mother’s penalty’ to being a domestic or migrant worker, care and therefore largely informal, unpaid work relegates a woman’s status to the lower strata of socio-political and economic spheres of society. But there is more to this exclusion with global economy suffering massively, research over the years reveal that even if two percent of the global GDP is invested in care economy, there would be increase in overall employment ranging from 2.4 percent to 6.1 percent in OECD countries and 1.2 percent to 3.2 percent in emerging markets. According to the World Economic Forum: “Estimatesshow that unpaid care work, if compensated, would represent nine percent of global gross domestic product (GDP), equivalent to $11 trillion.” Despite its critical role on global, communal and even household economies, the value of care remains invisible.
Unseen and unrecognized, the care landscape is further incapacitated due to climate change especially across the Global South where limited or scarce resources, impacts of war, reduced public services, especially for marginalized communities, further exacerbate the situation by intensifying an unfair distribution of unpaid care work.
Work, perception and narratives have indeed evolved when it comes to climate change. From being gender insensitive to gender responsive, there has been a shift with a call to action when it comes to investing in women. The approach, however, needs to be “care-sensitive” as well. “There is still a long way to go to become gender transformative, largely because of an enduring assumption that care is a feature of gender relations (or “women’s work”) rather than a collective necessity that is as foundational to economies and human survival as agriculture. Gender-transformative policies are those that redress the underlying causes of gender inequality, two of which are the feminization and invisibilization of care work, so that the goal of gender equality can be realized and sustained,” states the Caring in a changing climate: Centering care work in climate action,” Oxfam Research Backgrounder series (2022) authored by MacGregor, Sherilyn, Arora-Jonsson, Seema and Cohen, Maeve.
Direct as well as indirect care work have intensified and increased for both girls and women respectively, with the former taking up more responsibilities such as tending the old, young and those impacted by climate (heatwaves, floods etc) to cooking and taking care of the house; and the latter involved in the outside-the-household activities such as provisioning for necessary goods and subsistence that are severely limited and inadequate due to the ravages of war that cause agricultural damages and impacts of climate change including food and water scarcity.
With the onus on women and girls as far as subsistence work including forestry, animal husbandry, agriculture as well as household work and other income-generation activities is concerned, experts note the heavy toll on the well-being of women and girls; therefore the ever-widening critical gaps between care work and health of the persons who perform it.
Unpaid Care Work – An Explanation Unpaid care work is the time that individuals spend performing tasks in the home, including cooking, cleaning, collecting water and fuel, and caring for others such as children, ill or older family members – and many more. 1 Motivated by its focus on investments in the development and wellbeing of others, 2 care work is essential for individual, community and societal wellbeing; it sustains our standard of living and maintains the fabric of relationships within families and communities. 3 However, pervasive gender norms mean that this work is overwhelmingly performed by women and girls. Unpaid care work includes both direct and indirect activities: directs activities are those that involve direct care of persons (such as feeding or bathing a child, supervising others), while indirect care includes domestic work that serves an individual’s care needs (for example, cooking, cleaning, collecting firewood/water). It is unpaid because it arises out of these relational and social obligations; it is work because it requires time and energy from those who provide it; and it is care because it serves people and their wellbeing. – Information by: Plan International
Contextual factors shaping care work Gender norms and divisions: Unpaid care work is primarily done by women and girls. Everyday environmental relations: Subsistence work is done alongside care work. Social safety net (SSN) policies: When there are no state SSNs, such as child and elder care, unpaid care work falls to private households. Physical infrastructure: Lack of infrastructure and technologies (plumbing and electricity) increases the drudgery of doing everyday care work. Health, fertility, and mortality: The amount and type of care work depends on household make-up (very young, very old, very sick). Migration and displacement: The amount and type of care work done and needed by people left behind is affected when family members migrate; displacement increases physical and mental stresses, which make care work more difficult. Courtesy Oxfam - MacGregor, Sherilyn, Arora-Jonsson, Seema and Cohen, Maeve “Caring in a changing climate: Centering care work in climate action,” Oxfam Research Backgrounder series (2022)
Overlooked and often hidden, the relationship between care work and a woman’s well-being results in putting the burden of health on them. Women spend a majority of their lives in poor health due to but not limited to malnutrition and back to back pregnancies, varying forms of disabilities and illnesses such as cardiovascular diseases and tuberculosis. A McKinsey study reveals that closing even a quarter of the health gaps for women would add US$ one trillion to the world economy.
Better realities, based on sustainable gains, on the ground for women and girls can only be actualized through improved social protection policies, robust socio-legal and supportive frameworks that are organic and are appropriately implemented. According to the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law 2024 report, implementation gaps persist and vary region to region. It further reveals important gaps in legal frameworks, their enforcement and perceived outcomes.
Research, data, experts and multistakeholder organizations unanimously agree investing in women especially in the health, education and financial inclusion spheres can positively impact and bring about better outcomes for the entire populations.
While the road ahead is long and laden with challenges, pathways have not just been envisioned; they have been laid out, repeated and reiterated; and are now beckoning for action.
Image by Kasun Chamara from Pixabay
