Imagine being asked to work seven days a week, for free, without breaks or even a thank you. Those conditions might seem outrageous in any workplace, yet they are typical in our homes, where women are regularly expected to serve as faithful unpaid caregivers. Our recognition of the first scenario as a serious violation of labor rights, while the second can be brushed off as “tradition,” is a measure of the sexism still embedded in our thinking about economic equity in the U.S. and around the world.

A new analysis by the advocacy group ActionAid looks at case studies of women’s uncompensated work in Nepal, Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya as mothers, wives, managers of households and caregivers.The report concludes that women's unpaid daily tasks amount to a massive amount of time, energy and ingenuity that has been historically exploited and undervalued.

The report defines unpaid care work as home-based tasks like “cooking, cleaning, collecting water and firewood, and caring for the ill, elderly and children,” which are typically woven into interdependent relationships within communities and family structures. Not only is such work essential to maintaining the household; it is deeply interwoven with social development. Stability at home provides a base of security that enables other forms of economic advancement. Care work is of course crucial for children's development (as well as their future education), but it also enables male family members to engage in wage labor in the mainstream economy.

Yet the work women do for free involves long hours, no regulated break time and in some cases, abuse and coercion by family members. There are often huge social pressures to perform the work whether willing or no—such as to care for elderly family members in the absence of a strong healthcare or pension system. Yet the social burden of this gendered domestic labor reinforces gender hierarchies and, by extension, limits educational and job opportunities for women and their daughters.

For impoverished women, gender divides are sharpened by social marginalization. Poor women are often locked into relationships of dependency (on male "breadwinners&quot , while they face patriarchal subjugation (in economies that blockade women from skilled jobs or education), and resource constraints affecting the whole family (rural moms can't choose between nursing a sick baby and harvesting crops).

Activists pushing for recognition of unpaid labor aren’t demanding a paycheck for breastfeeding or fetching well water. They simply want society to reassess how it values labor and to respect women's often-hidden social contributions. One widowed Nepalese mother participating in the time-tracking project described her duties as “the type of work where we do not earn money but do not have free time either. Our work is not seen, but we are not free as well.”

Sometimes, just seeing women in a different light—as workers and citizens rather than free help—can be a step toward a more emancipated society, inside and outside the house.