Nepal’s recent Time Use Survey (2019) revealed that women of working age spend 5.9 hours daily on domestic work versus just 2.25 hours for men. Strategic investments in care infrastructure, drawing from lessons from the region, could free up women’s time for formal employment while simultaneously creating new jobs in the care services sector – thereby boosting Nepal’s female labor force participation rate from its current level of 28.7% in 2023.
Restrictive social norms and gender stereotypes continue to position women as the primary caregivers and men as the primary income earners, entrenching a gendered divide in the provision of both unpaid and paid care work and fueling the undervaluing of this essential work by society.
Depression rates in old age homes are high, with a study in Devghat showing that 82.6% of residents experienced depression due to lack of familial care, social isolation, and limited mental health support.
Women in Nepal spend six times more time on unpaid care work compared to men, which highlights a disproportionate burden of unpaid care work in the context of gender. This burden evolves from the ingrained cultural norms, associating men with providing roles and women with nurturing roles, leading to the gender stereotypes existent in the society, often defined in the form of social organization of care.