Until we recognise the invisible labour that keeps the economy running, we will never achieve gender equity.
Every day, millions of Australian women cook, clean, care, plan, manage and hold families together. This unpaid, unseen work is the foundation that enables the rest of society’s “productive” labour. Yet, in our economic system, this labour doesn’t count—not in GDP, not in “productivity,” and not in pay packets. But now, we’ve got a dollar value for this invisible work— and the numbers are staggering.
According to Dr Leonora Risse – Associate Professor in Economics at the University of Canberra and an economist who specialises in gender equality – unpaid work contributes $688 billion to the Australian economy every year. That’s roughly one-third of Australia’s GDP. Unsurprisingly, women are the primary contributors, with the average woman doing about $40,000 worth of unpaid work each year.
One of the most common refrains when the uneven division of household labour comes up is “men work longer hours”. But when you include unpaid labour—and adjust for the undervaluation of female-dominated jobs—women’s share of total labour rises from 36.8 per cent to 50.5 per cent.
In other words: women are doing roughly half of all labour in the economy, but being paid for less than half of it. Men, by comparison, are remunerated for 69 per cent of their total labour contribution.
When unpaid labour isn’t counted, our entire economic system rests on a partial and gender-biased picture of reality. These underlying gender norms don’t just shape the division of housework; they also reinforce the occupational segregation that remains among the worst in the OECD.
Sectors reliant on care and domestic work remain chronically undervalued. Gender-segregated occupations continue to struggle with skills shortages and lower wages. The result is predictable: pay gaps, insecure work, and a persistent belief that care is a personal choice rather than an economic necessity.
It’s been 10 years since Annabel Crabb published The Wife Drought, unpacking why women still carry the domestic load—and why women need “wives” (reliable domestic support) to fully participate in the workforce, while men need to take more responsibility at home.
A decade on, not much has changed. The HILDA Survey shows men’s contribution to domestic labour hasn’t shifted in 20 years, and women still do 50 per cent more housework than men. Even in dual-income households, women shoulder most of the unpaid care and domestic work.
No one exists as an individual in the labour market. Every hour of unpaid labour—the cooking, cleaning, emotional load, school drop-offs, elder care—enables someone else’s paid work. Until that imbalance is addressed at home, we’ll never achieve equity at work.
This isn’t a niche feminist concern or a “women’s issue”. It’s a core economic issue.
We need to start treating unpaid work and care as economic infrastructure, as essential to the nation’s functioning as transport or energy.
Policy frameworks must begin to measure and value this work. The ABS’ time-use surveys should continue to expand data collection on unpaid labour. Organisations must ask whose contributions are invisible in their systems, and whose labour remains unrecognised. And culturally, we must stop treating unpaid work as women’s destiny and start recognising it as everyone’s responsibility.
Because what isn’t recognised isn’t valued.
And what isn’t valued doesn’t change.
Lauren Beckman is a strategic communicator and creator of @lauren.lately, where she distils politics, policy and power through a feminist lens.
Top photo – Pictured: Lauren Beckman, Source: Supplied/Teniola Komolafe (with additional design by Missing Perspectives)