It’s 6 AM in Dhaka. The sun barely breaks through the morning haze as I scramble to prepare breakfast, calm a toddler’s tantrums, and feed my one-year-old, all while lining up a full day of meetings. In the background, another kind of labour unfolds, one that enables mine: My mother’s.
As I step into my (official) day, I hand my children to her care; she sings lullabies to one grandchild, warms lunch for the other, and, when I’m at my limit, reminds me I can do this, because she did it too. She has been a caregiver all her life, even as a young working woman. Alongside my children, she cares for her aging parents. Four generations of love and labour rest in her hands -- yet not a single hour is paid, documented, or valued in economic terms.
In Bangladesh, the disparity in care work is stark. On average, women spend over six hours a day on unpaid domestic and caregiving work. Men spend just over one hour. That gap isn’t just a gender issue, it’s an economic one.
If we were to attach a value to all the unpaid care work women do -- from cooking and cleaning to caring for children and the elderly, it would amount to nearly 15% of our GDP, according to the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS).
Let me put that into perspective: If unpaid care were a formal sector, it would be one of the biggest contributors to our economy. And yet, it remains invisible in our budgets, policymaking, and social protection systems.
When women are overburdened with care, they’re less able to enter or stay in paid work. Research indicates that even a modest reduction in a woman's unpaid care load can significantly enhance her ability to participate in the workforce.
For me, this isn’t theoretical. When I first returned to work after childbirth, every decision -- whether to log in to a meeting, respond to an urgent request, or take a few hours off -- depended on whether someone I trusted could care for my children.
This reality forces many women into impossible choices. A 2024 ILO study found that 54% of working parents in Bangladesh consider the lack of accessible, affordable, and quality childcare a major barrier for women to enter and remain in the workforce.
Additionally, 18% of parents reported having left jobs at some point due to childcare responsibilities. I would likely be among those statistics, dropping out or burning out, if it weren’t for my mother.
The absence of public care systems and safe, reliable options puts women like me in a bind. It puts our daughters in a cycle. And it tells women like my mother that their life’s work was not “real” work.
Paid caregiving, whether for children or elderly family members, remains poorly regulated in Bangladesh. Most caregivers operate in a legal grey zone with no accountability, often underpaid and overworked. Many are underage girls or women in informal conditions.
Would you trust someone the system hasn’t even bothered to invest in with your infant or ageing parent? I couldn’t. Which is why, like so many others, I rely on my mother -- because the system leaves me no safe alternative.
She belongs to what demographers call the “sandwich generation,” caregivers squeezed between looking after young children and elderly parents. But what happens when women like my mother can no longer carry the weight?
By 2050, one in five Bangladeshis will be over 60. Families, especially women, will bear the weight of care for children and the elderly, without a system to support them. The disconnect between what care gives and what it receives is not just unfair -- it’s economically shortsighted.
Yet beyond the unpaid realm, formal caregiving holds immense economic potential. If Bangladesh invested just 4% of its GDP in care services -- childcare, eldercare, home-based support -- we could create up to 7 million new jobs, according to the ILO.
Most of these would benefit women. And all of them would support families who are otherwise left to navigate care in silence and struggle.
What needs to change
If Bangladesh is to build an inclusive and sustainable future, we need to recognize, reduce, and redistribute care work. Start by recognizing unpaid care work for what it is: Work. That means counting it in national statistics, economic indicators, policy spaces, and social protection programs.
We need to invest in care infrastructure: Centres for children and elderly, trained home caregivers, community-based support systems. Bangladesh can also draw on homegrown models, such as Brac’s Play Lab, which has reached over 115,000 children since 2015 across Bangladesh, Tanzania, and Uganda.
We need to professionalize and protect paid caregivers, giving them dignity and legal protection so families aren’t forced to choose between trust and affordability. And we need to redistribute care responsibilities by promoting equal parental leave, engaging men in care from early on, and challenging stereotypes that limit caregiving to women.
In our society, we praise women for “doing it all,” but silently punish those who choose care. Educated women who “choose” to stay home with children or pause their careers to care for family are often judged.
Whispers follow: “She was doing so well, why did she stop?” As if nurturing a human being, or caring for elderly parents, is somehow less worthy than writing reports or attending conferences. We are conditioned to see paid work as success and care work as sacrifice.
Caregiving is not just personal. It’s economic, developmental, and gendered. Failing to invest in it limits women’s workforce participation, strains families, and stunts national growth.
Investing in care creates healthier families, more jobs, and a more inclusive economy. So next time we talk about productivity, let’s look beyond boardrooms and factories and instead look towards kitchens, bedrooms, and clinics, where women like my mother are powering the economy, unpaid and unseen.
I want to end by acknowledging my mother, who has carried our family with love, grace, and tireless effort. She stands with countless women whose contributions have long been dismissed as “just a mother” or “just a daughter.”
It’s time to recognize caregiving for what it is -- the foundation of our society and economy.
