NILIMA JAHAN

Women in Bangladesh carried out an estimated Tk 570,000 crore worth of unpaid household and care work in 2021, according to the country’s first Household Production Satellite Account (HPSA).

Unpaid work overall was valued at Tk 670,000 crore, which is equivalent to 18.9 percent of the country’s GDP -- with women performing 85 percent (16.14 percent of GDP) of this labour, according to the report, which was released yesterday.

The monetary value of unpaid household work alone stood at Tk 400,000 crore, with women contributing Tk 340,000 crore.

Meanwhile, unpaid care work was valued at Tk 270,000 crore, with women responsible for Tk 230,000 crore alone.

Men’s contribution remained significantly lower, totalling around Tk 100,000 crore.

Prepared by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics and UN Women Bangladesh, with support from the global Women Count programme and technical assistance from the Asian Development Bank, the HPSA draws on data from the Time Use Survey 2021 and the Labour Force Survey 2022.

The initiative followed the interim government’s pledge in 2025-26 fiscal year’s budget to integrate unpaid labour into official GDP calculations.

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