The COVID-19 crisis has revealed the extent to which public services have been under-funded for a generation across Africa, with women and girls in the poorest communities often having to take the strain and fill the gaps through unpaid care and domestic work. This crisis is however an opportunity for some fundamental changes, with governments looking for structural solutions and new ways forward, in short to build back better.
On average women spend four hours and 25 minutes daily doing unpaid care and domestic work, in comparison to men’s average of just one hour and 23 minutes. Globally this is changing by less than a minute per year. If properly valued this work would constitute at least 9% of global GDP or US$11 trillion.[i] In Ethiopia women spend more than 13 hours a day in domestic care work
[i] https://www.ilo.org/asia/media-centre/news/WCMS_633284/lang--en/index.htm