The work of older women in Africa is invisible and unpaid for, yet it holds families and communities together. Photo: File
At 73, Akosua rises every morning in a cramped compound house in Accra to sweep the yard, prepare porridge for five grandchildren and check on her partially blind sister who lives two rooms away. No one pays her. No pension covers these duties. But, without her, the entire household would collapse.
She is one of thousands of older women across Ghana and much of Africa whose unpaid care work sustains families, communities and social systems quietly, consistently and invisibly.
Across urban slums, peri-urban settlements and rural compounds, older women are holding together multigenerational households through caregiving, domestic labour and emotional support. This is not simply “helping out”. It is unpaid work, vital, feminised and overwhelmingly unrecognised by formal welfare systems.
Yet policy remains silent. When we speak of ageing, it is often through the lens of decline or dependency. But what if the story of older women is not only about what they need, but also about what they give and why it matters to make it visible?
The hidden economy of unpaid care
Globally, women perform more than 75% of all unpaid care work, a statistic that worsens with age and poverty. In Africa, the story is starker: older women become the default caregivers when younger adults migrate for work, fall ill or are pulled into precarious urban economies. This invisible labour fuels entire welfare ecosystems.
Feminist gerontology has long warned that ageing research often ignores the intersection of gender, care and economic marginalisation. Instead of celebrating older women’s agency, development narratives reduce them to passive recipients of aid. This is not just unjust, it is inaccurate.
My doctoral research, focused on six communities in Ghana — Osu, Dansoman, Adenta, Sege, Korle Gonno and Bawjiase — revealed a consistent theme: older women are the bedrock of caregiving and domestic continuity, often at great personal cost. Despite health challenges and economic insecurity, they continue to feed others, fetch water, clean, raise children and care for the sick.
And yet, their work is structurally ignored. It appears in no budgets, receives no subsidies and is absent from Ghana’s National Ageing Policy implementation.
Findings from the ground – Ghana’s older women speak
The stories shared in our focus group discussions paint a vivid picture of burdened resilience.
“I take care of my grandchildren while their mother goes to the market. Sometimes I don’t eat until evening because I have to make sure they eat first.”
— Female, 67, Peri-urban Greater Accra, Ghana
In Dansoman, an older woman described how, after retirement, her caregiving responsibilities actually increased:
“When I stopped formal work, I thought I would rest. But now I am doing more than before, school runs, hospital visits, even helping with rent sometimes.”
— Female, 72, Urban Greater Accra, Ghana
Another participant spoke of caregiving not as a choice but a moral obligation:
“In our tradition, you cannot abandon family. If your daughter leaves her children and goes to work, who will help? You, the grandmother.”
— Female, 70, Peri-urban Greater Accra, Ghana
This sense of moral duty is not accompanied by state support. Despite increasing frailty, most women continued these roles with little or no access to a pension, health subsidies or respite services.
Some even spoke of hiding illness, so they could keep supporting the household:
“I have waist pain, but I don’t tell them. If I stop cooking, who will do it?”
— Female, 65, Urban Greater Accra, Ghana
What emerges is not only a pattern of exploitation but a profound silence; no one is measuring or valuing this labour. Yet in these same communities, older men rarely reported similar caregiving roles.
Policy gaps and ageist blind spots
African states have made strides in developing ageing frameworks, but most remain age-neutral and gender-blind. Ghana’s National Ageing Policy (2010), for example, promises “equity and dignity” but fails to directly address unpaid care, nor does it propose actionable support for older female caregivers.
Similarly, The UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 5 (gender equality) and SDG 3 (good health and well-being) commit to reducing unpaid care burdens and supporting ageing populations. Yet these goals rarely intersect in policy or practice. In the Ghanaian context, no national health insurance scheme prioritises the needs of older female caregivers and no district-level social protection plan includes caregiver allowances for older persons.
The result is a perfect storm of invisibility — older women who give the most, receive the least.
Time to recognise and reward invisible work
In every policy document, every budget and every development goal, there is a name missing: Akosua, Efua, Abena, the older women whose unpaid care work is holding up a fraying welfare net.
They are not waiting for applause. But they deserve recognition, support and relief. We need gender-responsive ageing policies that measure and compensate unpaid labour. We need community support services, caregiving allowances and inclusive pension structures that reflect the social roles women continue to play long after retirement.
To ignore them is not only a moral failure, it is an economic one. When we make their work visible, we make their lives matter. Their invisible labour is the backbone of Africa’s welfare; it is time we named it, valued it and supported it.
Andrew Kweku Conduah is a research fellow at the Institute of Work, Employment & Society and a faculty member of the Faculty of Management Studies, University of Professional Studies, Accra. He is affiliated with the Regional Institute for Population Studies, University of Ghana and is a member of the Association of Ghana’s Elders. X link: @conduah_an96011