For seven years, Ernestine Mukasaveri was a housewife in Kimironko. Her husband, Gentil Hakizimana, a businessman, sometimes complained that she was not contributing much because she stayed at home.

That changed when Mukasaveri got a job and the couple had to share household responsibilities.

The difference became clear when she travelled for three days during an emergency, leaving Hakizimana to manage the children and household while continuing with his business.

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"I could not manage for just three days when she was away,” Hakizimana says. "I got so stressed. I wondered how she managed the seven years at home, and more so, now that she has a job.”

The experience changed his understanding of domestic work. He now encourages other men to become more involved in responsibilities at home.

Mukasaveri’s experience illustrates what happens when work inside the home remains largely invisible. Work does not become less valuable because it is unpaid.

For many women, that work begins long before they arrive at their paid jobs. There may be breakfast to prepare, children to get ready for school, water to fetch, a sick relative to check on and a household to put in order.

Even after leaving home, those responsibilities do not necessarily stay behind. A family emergency or a phone call about a child can quickly pull a woman back into running the household.

Much of this work is unpaid and often goes uncounted. Yet it takes time and energy that could otherwise be used for paid employment, running a business, attending training, pursuing a career or resting.

The latest Labour Force Survey from the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda shows that women spent an average of 23.7 hours per week on own-use production work in 2025, nearly twice the 12.7 hours recorded for men. Women spent the most time on cooking and shopping, followed by manufacturing household goods.

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The National Gender Statistics Report shows that women continue to spend considerably more time on unpaid work than men, while the employment gap remains. In February 2026, the employment-to-population ratio stood at 50.8 per cent for women compared with 64.4 per cent for men.

When care follows you

For Olive Mukase, a mental health specialist, one of the less visible effects of unpaid care is the mental load that accompanies it.

A woman may be physically present at work but mentally carrying household responsibilities—thinking about what the children will eat, whether someone has taken medicine, what needs to be bought or what needs to happen at school.

"The responsibilities do not stay at home,” Mukase explains. "Even when she goes to work, she carries them with her.”

A woman may not be cooking or cleaning at work, but she may still be organising, remembering and anticipating what needs to happen at home.

"The brain does not get a chance to rest,” she says, explaining that a woman can remain prepared to respond to a phone call or a problem from home even when she is supposed to be concentrating on work.

The consequences can include stress, difficulty sleeping and emotional exhaustion. In more serious cases, prolonged pressure can contribute to depression and leave women feeling that they are failing both at home and at work.

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The economic cost

ActionAid Rwanda has documented the economic consequences of this unequal division of care work.

Its countrywide research found that women spent considerably more time on care and domestic responsibilities than men, with the gap particularly pronounced in rural areas.

Women in rural areas spent six hours a day on such work, compared with two hours for men. In semi-urban areas, women spent five hours compared with one hour for men.

For a woman working in agriculture or running a small enterprise, those hours can directly affect income. Time spent fetching water, collecting firewood, preparing food and caring for children can mean less time to work in the field, travel to a market, attend a cooperative meeting or expand a business.

Clare Katwesigye, Women’s Rights and Advocacy Coordinator at ActionAid Rwanda, describes this as "time poverty”. Women may be forced to choose between care responsibilities and economic opportunities.

This can mean working fewer hours, choosing work close to home, remaining in informal or low-paid employment, leaving the labour market temporarily or turning down opportunities that require travel or longer working hours.

Less time for training, networking and leadership opportunities can also affect a woman’s prospects over many years.

Care starts early

Changing this pattern can begin much earlier, inside families and schools, with what children are taught about responsibility.

Boys to Men, an initiative led by Alain Numa through Equity Bridge, offers one example.

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The seven-day programme for boys aged 12 to 16 combines leadership, discipline, cultural values and practical life skills. Boys are taught skills such as cooking, cleaning, gardening and personal hygiene.

The wider lesson is that domestic work is not inherently women’s work.

Mukase argues that children need to learn early that cooperation is not a sign of weakness.

"We have to teach children that cooperation is not cowardice,” she says, noting that social norms can change when children grow up seeing men and women sharing responsibilities.

Women today are working, running businesses, leading organisations and participating in public life. Household arrangements need to reflect that reality.

A woman should not have to choose between being successful at work and being responsible for everything at home.

Making care fairer

The responsibility for change does not rest with families alone. The Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion (MIGEPROF) recognises unpaid care work as essential to families and the national economy.

But when it falls disproportionately on women, the Ministry says, it reduces the time available for employment, entrepreneurship, skills development and leadership while increasing fatigue and stress.

MIGEPROF is addressing unpaid care work through the principle of recognising, reducing and redistributing care responsibilities.

In line with Rwanda’s National Strategy for Transformation 2 and the National Gender Policy 2021, the Ministry is promoting positive fatherhood, shared decision-making and men’s active participation in domestic and caregiving responsibilities. The policy framework similarly identifies unpaid care work as a factor limiting women’s participation in productive activities.

Government investments in childcare, early childhood development, water, electricity and clean cooking technologies are also intended to reduce the time families, particularly women, spend on care-related tasks.

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But the Ministry acknowledges that gaps remain, including unequal social norms, limited affordable childcare and gaps in care-supporting infrastructure. It says the response will also require stronger childcare systems, family-friendly workplaces and the integration of unpaid care work into planning, budgeting and monitoring.

UN Women describes unpaid care as a structural barrier to women’s economic empowerment. Its proposed response follows the same three principles: recognise, reduce and redistribute unpaid care work.

Recognition means making the value of unpaid care more visible. Reduction means investing in services and technologies that save time and labour, including childcare, water access and clean energy. Redistribution means encouraging men and boys to take a greater share of domestic and caregiving responsibilities.

There has also been progress in recognising the value of unpaid care in law. Rwanda’s revised family law, adopted in 2024, provides that the value of unpaid care work performed by one or both spouses can be considered in the division of property following divorce. The law is among the measures listed in the government’s current gender-policy framework.

But laws, policies and services can only go so far if expectations inside households remain unchanged.

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For Mukasaveri’s husband, it took only three days of managing the household to understand what seven years of unpaid work had meant for his wife.

For many women, the work remains a daily reality: necessary, often invisible and rarely reflected in the way economic contribution is measured.

Making care fairer means changing that equation—not by placing less value on care, but by ensuring that the responsibility for providing it is shared.