In the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics’ 2021 Time Use Survey, rural women aged 15 and over spent 24.7% of their day on unpaid domestic chores and care work, and urban women 24.0%. Rural and urban men spent 3.2% and 3.3%.
About 7.6 times
Rural women’s share of the day on unpaid care and chores relative to rural men’s (24.73% against 3.25%), 2021.
A quarter of a 24-hour day is roughly six hours; 3% is under an hour. The gap is almost the same in towns and villages, so urbanisation alone does not appear to redistribute this work. Among women, the burden peaks at ages 25–44 (28.8% in urban areas, 29.7% in rural areas), the years when many are also raising children, and falls to 11.4–11.9% from age 65. Men’s share stays between 1.7% and 4.0% in every age group, in both areas.
This work is unpaid and mostly uncounted in GDP, yet it competes with paid work, study and rest. Earlier DEEPLAB insights show that about four in ten women are in the labour force and that women’s employment is more often vulnerable than men’s. The survey does not test whether care duties explain those gaps, so the link should be read as context, not cause. The figures are a share of time reported in a single survey year, not hours measured directly; the hours quoted above are our arithmetic from those shares.
For policy, the data point to child care, elder care and basic services such as water and cooking fuel as ways to free women’s time, alongside norms that spread care within households. SDG indicator 5.4.1 tracks this share, and 2021 is the only year available for Bangladesh.
Source: Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, Time Use Survey 2021, via UN SDG Global Database (SL_DOM_TSPD), accessed October 2026.