The Invisible Backbone of Society: Why Mother’s Day Must Also Be a Call for Economic Justice Beyond Flowers and Celebration

Every year, Mother’s Day arrives wrapped in flowers, heartfelt messages, celebratory lunches, and public declarations of love and gratitude for mothers and caregivers. Across the world, women are praised for their sacrifice, resilience, tenderness, and strength. Yet once the day passes and the celebrations quiet down, millions of women return to a reality where the very labour that makes families, communities, and economies function remains largely invisible, uncompensated, and deeply undervalued.

For many women, Mother’s Day is not a day of rest. It is another day of caregiving, domestic labour, emotional support, and invisible responsibility. The irony is impossible to ignore. Society celebrates mothers while continuing to rely heavily on systems that exploit their unpaid labour.

The Invisible Labour Holding Society Together

Behind the functioning of every society lies an enormous amount of unpaid care work. It is found in the meals prepared before sunrise, the children bathed and comforted, the elderly cared for, the emotional burdens absorbed, the homes maintained, and the endless invisible planning that keeps households afloat. It is labour that requires time, energy, skill, emotional intelligence, and physical endurance.

Yet because this work is performed predominantly by women and girls within homes and families, it has historically been dismissed as a natural duty rather than recognised as the essential labour that it truly is. Care work is often framed as an act of love alone, while the enormous physical, mental, and economic burden attached to it is ignored.

Without care work, societies would collapse under the weight of their own demands. Entire labour systems function because someone, usually a woman, is ensuring that children are raised, workers are fed, homes are managed, and families are emotionally sustained. It is the invisible foundation upon which visible economies are built.

Why Women and Girl Children Carry the Greatest Burden

Women across the world spend significantly more hours on unpaid care work than men. In many households, women carry the full responsibility of domestic labour while also participating in formal employment. For women living in poverty, rural communities, or under-resourced environments, the burden becomes even heavier.

They are expected to care for children, support unemployed family members, tend to the sick, fetch water, cook, clean, and maintain households, often without any financial security or social protection. In many homes, these responsibilities are so normalised that they are no longer recognised as labour at all.

Many girl children are also pulled into these responsibilities from an early age, sacrificing their education, personal development, rest, and childhood in order to help sustain their families. Across communities, girls are often socialised into caregiving roles long before they are given the freedom to dream fully for themselves. The burden of unpaid care work therefore does not begin in adulthood. It begins in childhood.

The Economic System Built on Unpaid Care Work

Economies depend on care work, yet care work itself remains excluded from economic recognition. Governments measure productivity through wages, profits, and formal labour markets while ignoring the unpaid labour that makes all of these systems possible.

This exclusion creates a dangerous contradiction. Women sustain economies through unpaid labour while remaining economically excluded from the benefits of those same economies. Many women struggle to access stable employment opportunities because caregiving responsibilities consume most of their time. Others are pushed into informal labour, financial dependency, or chronic economic insecurity.

In many cases, women enter old age without pensions, savings, or meaningful financial protection despite having worked tirelessly for decades inside homes and communities. Their labour has sustained generations, yet the economy often behaves as though that labour never existed.

The Cost of Care: Poverty, Exhaustion, and Economic Exclusion

The emotional and economic costs of unpaid care work are enormous. Women carry disproportionate levels of stress, burnout, financial insecurity, and emotional exhaustion while balancing caregiving responsibilities with survival. Many women are expected to continuously pour into others while receiving little support themselves.

This reality raises difficult but necessary questions about how societies define work, productivity, and value. Why is labour only considered economically meaningful when it generates wages? Why are caregiving responsibilities treated as private family matters rather than collective social responsibilities? Why are women praised endlessly for sacrifice while systems continue to benefit from their unpaid labour without offering protection, compensation, or relief?

The burden of care is not simply personal. It is structural. It is political. It is economic.

Why Unpaid Care Work Must Be Recognised as Real Labour

Recognising unpaid care work as legitimate labour is not simply a symbolic gesture. It is a matter of economic justice and gender equality. Care work is labour because it requires effort, skill, time, and sacrifice. It contributes directly to social stability and economic productivity. Governments, institutions, and policymakers must begin to treat care work as essential social infrastructure. This includes investing in affordable childcare, healthcare systems, elder care support, parental leave, social grants, and labour protections that reduce the disproportionate burden carried by women.

Recognition must also include creating pathways for compensation, economic inclusion, and dignity for caregivers whose labour sustains families and communities every single day. A society that depends so heavily on care work cannot continue pretending that this work has no economic value.

From Symbolic Appreciation to Structural Change

While symbolic appreciation matters, it is not enough. Flowers, tributes, and celebratory messages cannot replace structural justice. Women do not only need praise for their resilience. They need systems that reduce the conditions that require endless resilience in the first place.

Meaningful change requires policies that protect caregivers, economies that recognise unpaid labour, and workplaces that acknowledge the realities of caregiving responsibilities. It requires shifting public attitudes that romanticise women’s suffering while expecting endless sacrifice from them. Motherhood and caregiving should not become pathways into poverty, exhaustion, or economic invisibility.

Reimagining Care, Equality, and Shared Responsibility

Beyond policy, there must also be a cultural shift. Boys and men must be taught from an early age that caregiving and domestic responsibilities are not inherently feminine obligations. Families and communities must challenge the normalisation of overburdening women with invisible labour while praising minimal participation from men. True equality cannot exist where one group is expected to carry the emotional, domestic, and caregiving weight of society without recognition or relief. Care work must become a shared social responsibility rather than a silent burden disproportionately carried by women and girls.

Mother’s Day as a Moment of Accountability

Mother’s Day should therefore be more than a celebration. It should also be a moment of reflection and accountability. To honour mothers and caregivers truthfully is to acknowledge not only their love and sacrifice, but also the systemic inequalities that shape their daily realities. It is to recognise that many women are exhausted not because they are weak, but because societies have normalised extracting endless labour from them while offering little support in return.

Care Work Keeps the World Moving

Care work is not simply an act of love. It is labour. It is social infrastructure. It is an economic contribution. It is the quiet force that keeps humanity alive and functioning. The time has come for societies to stop treating unpaid care work as invisible. Recognition must be followed by investment, protection, and compensation. Women and girl children should not have to carry the burden of sustaining society at the expense of their own economic freedom, health, education, and dignity.

As we celebrate mothers this year, may we move beyond symbolic appreciation and commit ourselves to building systems that truly value the labour of care. Because care work keeps the world moving, and the women carrying it deserve far more than a single day of recognition.

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References and Sources:

UN Women – Facts and figures on unpaid care and domestic work
https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/csw61/redistribute-unpaid-work

International Labour Organization (ILO) – Care Work and Care Jobs for the Future of Decent Work
https://www.ilo.org/global/publications/books/WCMS_633135/lang–en/index.htm

Oxfam – Time to Care Report
https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/time-care

OECD – Gender Equality and Unpaid Care Work
https://www.oecd.org/gender/data/balancing-paid-work-unpaid-work-and-leisure.htm

World Bank – Gender Data Portal
https://genderdata.worldbank.org

UNICEF – Girls’ Education and Domestic Responsibilities
https://www.unicef.org/education/girls-education

UN Economic Commission for Africa – Gender Equality and Women’s Economic Empowerment
https://www.uneca.org

African Union – Strategy for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment
https://au.int/en/documents/20181128/au-strategy-gender-equality-and-womens-empowerment-2018-2028

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About the Author:

Ntsiki Khunju is a passionate writer, child protection advocate, and women’s rights activist. As a dedicated contributor to Activate! Change Drivers, Ntsiki uses the power of words to spark vital conversations, drive positive change, and empower communities. With a deep commitment to advocacy, she plays a pivotal role in protecting children and advancing the rights of women through her work. She is devoted to using her writing to inform, educate, and inspire, helping to foster a more just and equitable society.