By Francis Ntow/Sasel Ekumah, GNA
Accra, June 14, GNA – Women in Ghana continue to shoulder a disproportionate burden of unpaid care work regardless of their educational attainment, with cultural norms rather than lack of education driving the inequality, a study has shown.
The study, conducted under the United for Care-Sensitive Approaches to Rights and Empowerment (UCARE) project, found no significant reduction in women’s unpaid care workload across different education levels, challenging the widely held assumption that education alone can ease the burden.
UCARE is a five-year initiative being implemented by the Network for Women’s Rights in Ghana (NETRIGHT).
It is in partnership with WiLDAF Ghana, the Centre for Indigenous Knowledge and Organisational Development (CIKOD), Norsaac and the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER).
The project seeks to promote the recognition, reduction and redistribution of unpaid care work, particularly among women and girls, through research, advocacy and community interventions.
Using data from the Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS 6) and the Ghana Time Use Survey, the research revealed that women, whether they had no formal education or had attained middle school education and beyond, spent about three times more time on unpaid care work than their male counterparts nationwide.
The disparity was even greater in the Northern, North East and Savannah regions, where women spent more than three times as much time on unpaid care work as men, suggesting that the inequality was rooted more in social norms than in access to education.
Unpaid care work includes caring for children, older persons, people living with disability or illness, as well as household tasks such as cooking, cleaning, washing clothes and fetching water and firewood.
The study further found that paid employment did not exempt women from domestic care responsibilities.
Women in northern Ghana who worked between 40 and 59 hours a week still spent 4.7 times more time on unpaid care work than men working similar hours.
Presenting the findings at a dissemination forum organised by NETRIGHT in Accra, Ms Lydia Dogee, Gender Equality and Social Inclusion Specialist with UCARE, said unpaid care work continued to be viewed largely as women’s responsibility.
“Education increases a woman’s economic capacity to pay for help,” she said.
“More educated women may be able to afford domestic assistance, but this benefits only a small segment of the population and does not challenge the social norms that assign care work to women in the first place,” she said.
Ms Dogee noted that many communities attached social recognition and pride to women’s ability to perform care duties without complaint, while men who participated in such tasks often faced ridicule.
She said the UCARE project, funded by the Government of Canada with CAD9.8 million and running until March 2029, was already contributing to positive behavioural changes in some communities.
Some households had begun providing bicycles and motorbikes to reduce the burden of fetching water and firewood, while adolescent boys were increasingly viewing care work as an important life skill rather than exclusively women’s work.
The study recommended sustained norm-change campaigns targeting schools, communities and religious institutions, alongside the integration of unpaid care considerations into district development planning.
Ms Ellyn Floyd, Project Director for UCARE, said the findings showed that unpaid care work remained a cultural expectation imposed on women and girls across all educational levels.
“Women and girls bear the weight of unpaid care work across all education levels. This is not a skills gap; it is a cultural expectation. Until we shift norms around who does the care, schooling alone will not redistribute those responsibilities,” she said.
She called for coordinated, data-driven policies across the gender, education, labour and social protection sectors, as well as community-based advocacy efforts that would translate research evidence into action and accountability.
GNA
Edited by Agnes Boye-Doe
Reporters: By Francis Ntow/Sasel Ekumah
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