What is The Hidden Cost of Nigerian Women’s Unpaid Labour?

Mother and children preparing food in a bright, cosy kitchen setting. Credit: RDNE Stock Project/Pexels.

Fadekemi was six when she first felt the sting of splattered hot oil on her skin. She recalls her mother’s stern voice instructing her on how to make stew the way her father liked it. Fifty-one years and thousands of stew pots later, Fadekemi still wonders if that’s all she was made to do.

In different parts of Nigeria today, there are millions of women like Fadekemi, each spending at least 5 hours daily on unpaid care and domestic work. Although Nigerians rarely pay women for care and domestic duties, research shows that it is real work with an annual economic value of up to $111 billion.

How Women Carry Nigeria’s Unpaid Labour

According to the Nigeria Time Use Survey (NTUS) 2024 report, the average Nigerian woman spends 21% of her day on unpaid domestic and care work; this equals 5 extra hours, while men spend just one hour on unpaid work. This means that after spending 8 hours at work, she spends another 5 hours doing childcare and household work, making it a double shift. Yet when you look at the economic drivers of Nigeria’s economy, her time or work does not count; it is seen as a woman’s work.

This inequality is seen as invisible labour. We see it show up in different phases of women’s lives, yet we still miss how heavy an unequal burden this is. Right from when a girl is 13, she becomes an unpaid labourer, doing domestic chores, taking care of siblings, yet these contributions are seen as nothing to Nigeria’s GDP.

For Fadekemi, this unpaid labour started at six, continued into her teenage years, where she became a caregiver for her siblings, extended into motherhood, and now, as a grandmother, she continues to be a caregiver for her grandchildren because even traditions like Omugwo exclude men from care duties.

Behind those hours of unpaid labour is a missed opportunity for the country’s GDP growth.

In a 2026 study published in BMC Paediatrics, over 64% of women said they were the primary caregivers of their newborn children. In some cases, this is a result of traditional belief systems that reinforce gender roles and assign domestic duties to women. In other cases, it is a systemic failure caused by policies that reinforce gender inequality. In Nigeria, for example, mothers are entitled to maternity leave with 50% pay, while only fathers in the civil service are entitled to 14 days of paternity leave. 

So what happens to private sector fathers? The national policy designs them to be absent fathers from day one and reinforces the narrative that their sole role is to be a provider and presence doesn’t matter.

Experts have highlighted that cutting a new mother’s salary by 50% while excluding most fathers from paid leave reinforces the belief that a man’s primary duty is to be a financial provider and makes it harder for them to be present. And when that happens, care once again becomes the woman’s job.

According to Nigeria’s proposed National Care Policy, when care duties are shared, the entire country benefits. Care moves from an unpaid, largely invisible responsibility to a thriving economic sector that creates jobs, supports businesses, strengthens national productivity, and enables millions of women to participate more fully in the labour market. Recognising the value of care work drives employment of 1.7 million mothers and could add $111 billion to the economy, 8 times more than the oil sector.

This invisible labour has a price tag, and even though it appears that Nigerian women are the only ones who bear the cost, the entire country pays for it. When one segment of the population is unable to fully participate in the labour market, growth stalls for everyone.

If you’d like to provide input on the draft of the National Care Policy, please do so at nigeriacarepolicy.org.

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