Shabana’s day begins long before sunrise in Thatta. By four in the morning, she is walking to fetch water. She cooks for her children, cleans for her in-laws, tends to her husband and then stitches clothes to earn a few rupees. By the time she collapses into bed at night, she has worked harder than most salaried employees. Yet her labour is invisible. It earns no pension, no recognition, no applause.
Her daughter Ayesha once dreamed of being a teacher. Today, at only fourteen, she has left school to care for her siblings. Her childhood is slipping away, consumed by unpaid work. This is not just their story. It is the story of millions of women and girls across Pakistan.
Caregiving responsibilities remain one of the biggest barriers to women’s participation in the labour force. They trap women in what is often called ‘time poverty’, limiting their well-being, curbing education and cutting off personal development. In Pakistan, women and girls live what we call the ‘double shift’.
Even when employed full-time, they spend more than four hours a day on unpaid care work compared to just one for men. Yet none of this appears in GDP. For girls, the burden is even heavier.
At home, the numbers speak for themselves. Twenty-six million children in Pakistan are out of school, most of them girls. Many are kept at home to care for siblings or do household chores. Gender norms dictate that care is a woman’s responsibility.
This expectation robs girls of their education, their health and their futures. In Pakistan, 18 per cent of girls are married before the age of 18 – one out of every five. Every child bride represents another dream extinguished.
The climate crisis multiplies these burdens. When floods swept across Pakistan in 2022, schools and homes were washed away, leaving girls the first to drop out of school. When drought grips villages, girls walk further each year to fetch water, risking their safety and education.
Every disaster increases unpaid care. Unless we build climate-resilient homes, schools and service delivery, we cannot build a resilient Pakistan.
This September in Kathmandu, at the Asia-Pacific Forum on Care, I carried these voices from Pakistan. The message was clear: care is not a favour women perform; it is the backbone of our families, our communities, our economy. To build stronger societies, we must build care systems.
Yet amidst all this, Pakistan has made progress. In 2023, parliament passed the Maternity and Paternity Leave Act, finally recognising that caregiving is a shared responsibility.
In 2025, I introduced the Child Marriage Restraint Act in Islamabad, which was passed into law, strengthening Pakistan’s commitment to protecting girls from early marriage.
Every father who takes paternity leave brings Pakistan a step closer to equality. Every girl kept safe from child marriage moves us closer to justice. But laws are only the beginning.
Pakistan must now invest where it matters. We need clean drinking water so girls are not burdened with hours of fetching. We need affordable energy so households are not dependent on women’s unpaid labour.
We need safe transport, childcare centres and early learning facilities so mothers can work and children can thrive. We need daycare in every workplace so adolescent girls are not pulled out of school to provide care.
These are not luxuries. They are infrastructure as essential as roads, power plants and schools. This requires not only government commitment but also bold public–private partnerships that can scale affordable childcare, eldercare and workplace facilities, ensuring care becomes a shared societal priority rather than an individual burden.
Around the Asia-Pacific, countries are increasingly turning to such partnerships to expand access to quality care. Pakistan must do the same.
Our own history proves we can. In 1994, Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto launched the Lady Health Workers Programme, transforming housewives into frontline health ambassadors. It delivered services to millions and shifted social norms by showing that women could step outside the home with dignity and respect.
The Benazir Income Support Programme recognised women as central to household resilience. The next step is clear: align BISP with care delivery, so caregivers themselves are supported, recognized and rewarded.
The Kathmandu Forum gave us a framework: Recognise. Reduce. Redistribute. Reward. Recognise unpaid care in surveys and budgets. Reduce it by investing in infrastructure and services. Redistribute it more fairly between women and men. Reward it by professionalising care work and ensuring caregivers are paid with dignity.
Imagine Shabana no longer carrying water at dawn because her village has clean water. Imagine Ayesha back in school, preparing to become a teacher. Imagine a Pakistan where no girl is forced into marriage because her only perceived value is unpaid care.
Every time we deny a girl her education, we lose not just a daughter but a doctor, a teacher, a leader. Every time we invest in care, through clean water, childcare, climate-resilient housing or paternity leave, we transform not just women’s lives, but the future of our nation.
To value care is to secure Pakistan’s future.
Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed in this piece are the writer's own and don't necessarily reflect Geo.tv's editorial policy.
The writer is a member of the National Assembly. She holds a PhD in Law, and serves on the National Assembly’s Special Committee on Kashmir.