Transforming care systems

Care work is at the heart of everyday life. Everyone requires and provides care throughout their lifetime – yet care work remains invisible, undervalued, and unequally distributed.

Across the world, care is still treated primarily as a private responsibility, carried mainly by women. Globally, women and girls provide nearly three times more unpaid care work than men, limiting their access to education, decent work, and participation in public life. Today, hundreds of millions of women are outside the labour market because of unpaid care responsibilities.

Women also make up the majority of paid care workers, often in low-paid, informal, or unprotected jobs.

Ageing populations, climate change, conflict, and crises place growing pressure on already-stretched care systems. By 2030, 2.3 billion people will require care and support.

Transforming care systems is urgent and a major opportunity. Investing in care can advance gender equality, create nearly 300 million decent jobs by 2035, and help build more resilient societies.

Our solutions

TransformCare is UN Women’s global initiative addressing the undervaluing and unequal division of care work to improve the lives of women and girls. It advances a vision of care as a public good, skilled and essential work, and the foundation of equality and shared economic prosperity.

TransformCare supports transformative change across the 6R Framework. The initiative is anchored in UN Women’s Strategic Plan, 2026–2029 and UN Women’s Economic Empowerment Strategy.

Building on and leveraging UN Women’s programmes, and supported by multiple partners across countries and regions, TransformCare enables a large-scale, long-term, multi-partner response. With an overarching global component, the initiative operates in more than 50 countries across six regions, representing more than two thirds of the global population.

By 2035, TransformCare has the potential to contribute to:

UN Women works with governments, civil society, the private sector, academia, and development partners through three pathways:

Change pathways

Our results

Between 2020 and 2025, UN Women contributed to measurable progress towards more equitable and resilient care systems.

Strengthened care systems, services, and infrastructure

• 259 care-related laws, policies, and strategies developed or strengthened to advance care systems.
• 1,005 public and private institutions adopted care-focused laws, systems, policies, plans, or strategies.
• 1,445 institutions enhanced their capacity to design and implement care-supporting reforms.
• 148 initiatives generated data and evidence, including 202 knowledge products and tools.
• 24 time-use surveys implemented, informing policymaking.
• Since 2025, 70,000 women accessed improved care services, infrastructure, and technology through UN Women-supported programmes and platforms.

Country examples

• In Colombia, UN Women supported the establishment of the National Care System in 2023 and the National Care Policy in 2025.
• In November 2025, 43 countries of the European Union and Latin America and the Caribbean endorsed the Bi-regional Pact for Care to increase cooperation in building care systems.
• In Nepal, UN Women’s technical support applying the UN Women–ILO Costing and Investment Tool informed national care discussions and the creation of a National Care Working Group, which influenced policies and budgets, including funding to expand urban care services in Kathmandu.
• In Rwanda, UN Women supported access to energy-efficient cooking stoves and water tanks for rural women’s cooperatives, strengthening climate-responsive care infrastructure. Initial results recorded up to an 80 per cent reduction in fuelwood consumption and time savings in unpaid domestic work – enabling women’s greater participation in income-generating activities.

Decent work and improved conditions in the care economy

• 97 care-related frameworks adopted or strengthened to promote decent work for care workers.
• 573 caregiver and care-recipient organizations supported to influence norms, standards, and practices in the care economy.
• 630 employers implemented care-supportive workplace policies, services, standards, certification schemes, or training programmes.
• 251 multi-stakeholder processes and platforms supported for inclusive care policymaking.

Country examples

• In Bosnia and Herzegovina, UN Women supported the Gerontodomaćice Model, which formalizes home-based care for older persons, through training, certification, and access to health and pension benefits. In 2025, 342 caregivers were certified, creating formal employment pathways in the care sector, while supporting the provision of quality care for older persons.
• In Côte d’Ivoire, UN Women supported the government’s expansion of parental leave for public servants. The decree, adopted in 2025, doubles maternity leave to six months and increases paternity leave from 3 to 30 days.

Shifts in social norms to value and redistribute care

• 307 institutions implemented policies addressing care-related discrimination and stereotypes.
• 1,181 institutions strengthened their capacity to shift discriminatory norms.
• 309 initiatives implemented to advance social norms change.

Country examples

• In Jordan and Morocco, UN Women’s Dare to Care programme has contributed to a reduction in the gender gap in unpaid care work by 73 minutes per day among target families in Morocco and 47 minutes among married couples in Jordan. The programme aims to transform patriarchal masculinities and discriminatory social norms related to unpaid care work.