Housework and Care of Young Children Throughout the world women continue to bear primary responsibility for childcare and house-work. This unpaid work remains economically invisible, but creates a foundation for all other economic, political and social life. At the same time, pregnancy and care for young children impede women's opportunities for employment. Women today increasingly lack the traditional support of the extended family, in which other family members participated in childcare and children helped with agricultural and domestic chores. Childcare is often a heavy burden on women who work outside the home to support the family.
Poverty greatly exacerbates the problem.
A survey in Japan found that married women with paying jobs spent an average of two hours and 26 minutes daily on household chores, while married men spent an average of only seven minutes. Japan is not unique in this regard. The vast majority of women in developing countries continue to be employed in agriculture, but most do not own the land on which they toil. For example, in South-east Asia and the Indian subcontinent at least 70 per cent of the female labour force works in agriculture. Yet fewer than 10 per cent of women farmers in India, Nepal and Thailand are landowners.