India is aspiring to become a $5 trillion economy. We track capital inflows, manufacturing output, startup valuations, and ESG disclosures with precision. Yet one of the country’s largest economic contributions remains absent from our balance sheets: unpaid care work.

According to the Government of India’s Time Use Survey (2019), women spend nearly five hours a day on unpaid domestic services and over two hours on unpaid caregiving. Men spend a fraction of that time. In effect, Indian women perform almost ten times more unpaid care work than men. This labour — cooking, cleaning, elder care, childcare, emotional support — is not counted in GDP.

Yet if valued conservatively at prevailing market wages, various estimates suggest unpaid household work could account for a substantial share of India’s economic output — some studies placing it between 15% and 40% of GDP, depending on methodology. Even at the lower bound, this represents an economic contribution larger than several formal sectors combined.

For corporate India, this is not a social statistic. It is a governance variable.

 

The Link Between Care and Labour Markets

India’s female labour force participation rate remains among the lowest for major economies, hovering around 25–30% depending on the dataset. One of the primary drivers is the disproportionate burden of unpaid care work. When women exit or avoid formal employment due to caregiving responsibilities, businesses lose talent, leadership diversity weakens, and productivity potential declines.

The McKinsey Global Institute has previously estimated that advancing gender equality could add hundreds of billions of dollars to India’s GDP by 2025. However, such projections often understate the structural constraint imposed by unpaid care.

For companies investing heavily in human capital strategies, this is a risk exposure. Attrition, stalled mid-career progression, and underrepresentation in senior management cannot be assessed purely through HR metrics. They are linked to care burdens that remain outside corporate dashboards.

Internal audit functions, particularly under the Institute of Internal Auditors’ Three Lines Model, are increasingly expected to provide assurance over emerging risks — including ESG, human capital, and sustainability disclosures. Unpaid care work intersects with all three.

 

ESG Reporting: The Missing Layer

Corporate India has made visible progress in ESG reporting, especially following SEBI’s Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting (BRSR) requirements. Diversity ratios, pay equity disclosures, and board representation metrics are now regularly published. But there remains a conceptual gap.

Gender parity in hiring does not automatically translate into retention or leadership parity if caregiving responsibilities remain structurally unequal. Flexible work policies, childcare support, parental leave parity, and eldercare frameworks are not merely HR benefits — they are risk mitigation tools.

If ESG reporting claims alignment with Sustainable Development Goal 5 (Gender Equality), the materiality of care must be acknowledged. Otherwise, reporting risks becoming compliance-oriented rather than transformative.

Internal auditors evaluating ESG disclosures should consider whether workforce data reflects underlying structural realities. For example:

• Is attrition higher among women in caregiving age brackets?
• Are flexible work arrangements equitably accessed?
• Do return-to-work programmes meaningfully address care interruptions?

These are not activist questions. They are governance questions.

 

Care Work as Economic Shock Absorber

The COVID-19 pandemic provided a stress test for economies and corporations alike. During lockdowns, unpaid care work surged as schools closed, health systems strained, and domestic support collapsed. Women disproportionately absorbed this shock.

Research globally demonstrated that women’s workforce exits were strongly correlated with care responsibilities. India was no exception. The burden fell silently, but its economic consequences were measurable — lost incomes, reduced consumption, weakened growth recovery.

From a macroeconomic standpoint, unpaid care functions as a shock absorber. Households compensate for institutional breakdowns through additional labour. This reduces immediate fiscal pressure on states and operational disruptions for businesses.

However, over-reliance on invisible labour is unsustainable. If caregiving pressures intensify — due to ageing populations, health crises, or urban migration — the strain will translate into formal economic slowdown.

Corporate governance frameworks must therefore view care infrastructure — both public and private — as part of long-term economic resilience.

 

Why This Matters for Boards and Audit Committees?

Boards are increasingly tasked with overseeing human capital strategy and ESG risks. Yet unpaid care work rarely features in risk registers.

The absence does not reflect insignificance; it reflects historical accounting blind spots. Traditional national accounting systems, critiqued decades ago by feminist economists such as Marilyn Waring and Nancy Folbre, were never designed to capture social reproduction.

But governance norms evolve. Just as climate risk moved from environmental concern to board-level agenda, gendered care risk may soon demand similar attention.

 

Forward-looking boards should:

• Integrate caregiving impact assessments into workforce analytics.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of flexible and hybrid work policies.
• Assess leadership pipeline attrition through a gendered lens.
• Align CSR and community investments toward care infrastructure.
• Internal auditors, as independent assurance providers, can catalyse this shift by expanding audit scope to include care-linked risk indicators.

 

The Competitive Advantage of Recognising Care

India’s demographic dividend will only translate into economic power if women participate fully in the labour force. That participation is inseparable from caregiving structures. Companies that recognise unpaid care work as economic infrastructure — not private obligation — will be better positioned to retain talent, strengthen resilience, and meet global ESG expectations. As India accelerates toward ambitious growth targets, ignoring the invisible economy would be short- sighted. Homes are not separate from markets; they sustain them. Economic value is not created only in boardrooms and industrial corridors. It is reproduced daily in kitchens, classrooms, and caregiving spaces. The sooner corporate governance frameworks acknowledge this, the stronger India’s growth story will be.

 

About the author:

By Priya Gupta
Chairperson, Women’s Forum
Institute of Internal Auditors – Delhi Chapter