The value of unpaid work done by each Kenyan woman has for the first time been set at Sh118,845 per year, putting the collective worth of the hours spent cooking, cleaning and caring for their families at Sh1.89 trillion.
The inaugural Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) report, titled Economic Value of Unpaid Domestic and Care Work in Kenya 2025, reveals a stark gender gap in unpaid labour, showing that women’s contribution far outweighs that of men.
According to the study, each Kenyan man performs unpaid work valued just Sh22,676 per year, putting men’s total contribution to unpaid domestic and care work (UDCW) at Sh353.89 billion.
This means women’s unpaid labour amounts to more than five times the collective Sh2.423 trillion annual UDCW, underlining the disproportionate burden of care and domestic responsibilities borne by women across the country.
This marks the first time Kenya has quantified the economic value of unpaid household and care work, offering a glimpse into the hidden economy that sustains millions of families but is not captured in the country’s traditional measures such as Gross Domestic Product.
‘On average, if UDCW activities had been remunerated, each woman aged 15 years and above would have earned Sh118,845 in 2021, whilst men aged 15 years and above would each have earned Sh22,676 for the same period,’ said KNBS in the new study.
The dominance of women in the unpaid labour ties with the 2021 Time Use Survey Report in which KNBS showed women spent 25.8 billion hours on unpaid domestic and care work while men spent 4.8 billion hours.
KNBS equates the Sh2.423 trillion to nearly a quarter (23.1 percent) of the value of Kenya’s economy in 2021, a revelation that reignites the global debate on the economic invisibility of domestic and care work.
The findings mirror a growing recognition worldwide that unpaid household labour – mostly performed by women – forms a vital yet uncounted pillar of economic productivity.
By quantifying its value, the report exposes the huge contribution women make to sustain households, communities and the formal economy, despite receiving neither pay nor recognition for it.
The study relied on the 2021 Time Use Survey Report and the Kenya Continuous Household Survey to quantify how much time women and men spent on household and care activities and assigned an equivalent market wage to that labour.
The report identifies food and meals management and preparation as the single most valuable category of unpaid work for women in Kenya at Sh1.073 trillion from 14.7 billion hours compared to men’s Sh157 billion courtesy of 2.1 billion hours.
The second most valuable form of unpaid work was caring and maintenance of textiles and footwear, where women’s unpaid work was valued Sh295.98 billion compared with men’s Sh55.33 billion.
Cleaning and maintaining the home and its surroundings was the third highest unpaid work for women at Sh192.92 billion while that of men was Sh48.17 billion.
Caring for children including feeding, cleaning and physical care came fourth with women at Sh176.83 billion and men at Sh7.12 billion.
Rounding out the top five categories was shopping for household and family members where women devoted hours valued Sh65.58 billion compared with men’s Sh27.64 billion.
The findings could reshape how Kenya measures and plans for economic development. Many policy experts and champions of equality have argued that not recognising or valuing the unpaid work perpetuates income gaps, lowers productivity and constrains national growth.
The valuation of the unpaid domestic and care work was based on data from the 2021 Kenya Continuous Household Survey which included a Time Use Survey (TUS) module.
The TUS module captured detailed information on how individuals aged 15 years and above spent their time over a 24-hour period, allowing the KNBS to quantify the total hours devoted to unpaid domestic and caregiving tasks.
The value of unpaid work was estimated by multiplying the total time spent on each type of unpaid activity by an appropriate wage rate that would be paid to a market worker performing similar services.