Giving Compass' Take:

• Jackie Marchildon and Gaëlle Langué report that researchers found that only small improvements have been made in closing the unpaid care gap, with the majority of the work still falling to women. 

• How can funders best work to reduce the gap in unpaid care work at scale? 

• Learn about policy shifts that can reduce inequities in care work. 

Globally, women spend up to 10 times more time on unpaid care and domestic work than men, according to a report released Wednesday at the 2019 Women Deliver Conference in Vancouver.

The “State of the World’s Fathers” report was produced by gender equality organization Promundo with Dove Men+Care, and it looked specifically at the amount of time men and women spent on unpaid care, such as caring for children or family members and taking care of household tasks.

In the report, 85% of fathers said they would do anything to be very involved in caring for their new child — but research revealed that they are still taking on much less than mothers.

“We’ve made extremely little progress,” Gary Barker, president and CEO of Promundo, said at a press conference. “Men have increased their time in unpaid care by a whole seven minutes.”

Researchers collected data from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Japan, Netherlands, the UK, and the US. They calculated that if women did 50 minutes less per day of unpaid care work, and men did 50 minutes more, middle- and upper-income countries would see a big impact in achieving equality in unpaid care.

Barker added that not only does no country have men doing 50% of unpaid care, but no country has officially committed to working toward it — which is why Promundo launched the Men Care Commitment for Governments this week with support from Women Deliver.

Read the full article about the unpaid care gap by Jackie Marchildon and Gaëlle Langué at Global Citizen.