LocationsThis Equal Pay Day, it’s time to look beyond the salary slip and ask who is paying the cost of care
Why Equal Pay Starts with Investing in Care
September 17, 2026
SHG-led childcare centre in Odisha, supported by UNDP in partnership with the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation
UNDP India
By Amit Kumar and Karina Bhasin / UNDP India
In Bawana, one of Delhi's major industrial hubs, Rinki wanted to work but needed someone to care for her two young children. This was made possible when a community crèche supported by UNDP India under the project Boosting Female Labor Force Participation through Strengthened Urban Care Ecosystem and run by Mobile Creches with local NGOs, opened in her neighbourhood. The centre provides childcare for children aged six months to six years, six days a week.
With her children safe in a nurturing environment, Rinki now runs a small shop outside her home, earning ₹2,000-3,000 a month and contributing to her family’s financial security.
Her story illustrates a point often missing from Equal Pay Day conversations: childcare isn’t only about children. It is also about giving women an equal opportunity to participate in paid work in the first place.
Rinki outside her shop in Bawana, Delhi
UNDP India
The pay gap starts with the care gap
Equal Pay Day reminds us of a persistent global reality: women continue to earn less than men. The principle is straightforward - equal pay for work of equal value. But realizing it requires looking beyond the workplace, to who stays home when a child is sick, who gives up work when childcare is unavailable and who absorbs the countless unpaid hours that keep households running.
Unpaid care work rarely appears in economic statistics as labour but its consequences are visible across a woman's working life. Without affordable childcare, women tend to take career breaks or accept flexibility at the cost of security and earnings. Over time, these choices compound into fewer opportunities, slower progression and lower lifetime incomes.
This is especially significant in urban India, where demand for childcare already far outpaces supply. Expanding Access to Childcare in Urban India: A Blended Finance Approach, a study based on household surveys across low-income urban communities estimates that 6–7 million women currently need quality, affordable childcare to enter or remain in the workforce. As urbanization and female workforce participation grow, this demand could rise to 20–23 million women by 2047, while existing public and private provision currently meets less than 10 per cent of this need.
The challenge, then, isn't simply creating more job opportunities for women. It involves building the care infrastructure that makes sustained participation possible.
Making care affordable, accessible and trusted for low-income urban families
Barriers and Opportunities: For Scaling Non-Government Provision of Childcare Services for Low-Income Urban Families highlights three interconnected barriers to scaling childcare: trust and safety, affordability, and service delivery. Parents need confidence in their children’s safety and wellbeing; families need services they can afford, while centres need sustainable resources to maintain quality.
The Bawana centre illustrates the affordability challenge and points to a wider tension: families contribute ~₹1,000 a month, while external funding covers the remaining cost. Quality childcare requires resources, but those who need it most can least afford to pay. Scaling childcare therefore requires financing models that keep services affordable for families while still enabling providers to deliver quality care.
India already has strong foundations to build on. Palna, under Mission Shakti, offers a national framework for childcare services for working women; current rules mandate crèche facilities in establishments with 50+ employees; and DAY-NULM connects urban women’s livelihoods with emerging opportunities in the care sector. The opportunity lies in strengthening the links between these existing frameworks and the needs of low-income families by bringing together evidence, financing approaches and delivery partnerships to ensure that policy translates into services that are scalable, accessible and sustainable.
The research findings and implementation experience point to the feasibility of a target user fee of ₹1,200-2,000 per month, supported by blended finance that brings together public resources, philanthropic capital and private-sector contributions. Community-based models bring childcare closer to families; SHG-led and carepreneur models build local ownership while creating livelihoods, whereas cluster-based models enable smaller businesses to share facilities that may be difficult to provide individually.
The principle is simple: if childcare is essential to women's economic participation, its costs and responsibilities cannot rest with individual families.
Maina engaging with children at the Bawana community crèche, where she has built a new livelihood as a childcare worker
UNDP India
The care economy can create jobs too
The ambition is to go beyond enabling women’s workforce participation to creating opportunities for skilled and dignified livelihoods within the care economy. Maina became a helper at the Bawana centre after completing a training programme with Mobile Creches. ‘I had never worked outside the home before - now I really enjoy it. Contributing to my family’s income makes me very happy’, she recalls. Her story illustrates how investing in childcare can create a virtuous cycle for women’s economic empowerment. But creating jobs is not enough. For care to help close the gender pay gap, the work itself must be recognized, skilled and fairly remunerated.
From care to decent work
UNDP has developed three NSQF-aligned qualifications in Early Child Development Services in partnership with the Healthcare Sector Skill Council (HSSC) to create a progressive pathway from frontline care work to coordination and entrepreneurship.
Twenty-five Master Trainers and Trainers have already completed a ToT programme while training is under way for 125 women in Chennai and Delhi. The state of Meghalaya has also formalized a partnership between the Meghalaya Early Childhood Development Mission (MECDM) and HSSC to train women across all three qualifications.
This progression matters because care remains undervalued both inside and outside the home. Those who enable others to participate in the economy should have their own work recognized and rewarded. Creating skilled livelihoods with fairer remuneration can professionalize the care workforce to improve more than childcare: it can help build a care economy where care is recognized as skilled economic work.
From decent work to equal opportunity
Our quest for equal pay remains essential as workplaces continue to address discrimination and occupational segregation. But it cannot be achieved without equal opportunity to participate in paid work in the first place. So today, the questions worth asking go beyond the salary slip: Who can take a job because someone else is caring for their child? And who is doing the caregiving work that makes everyone else’s work possible?
They point to a broader understanding of economic equality - one where childcare is treated as essential infrastructure; care work is skilled and valued, and responsibility for care is shared across households, employers, markets and the state. The right mix of policy, financing, local delivery and skill development can help more women enter, remain in and advance within the workforce. And when women have greater opportunity to participate and progress, closing the gender pay gap becomes more achievable.
The road to equal pay runs through equal opportunity, and for millions of women, equal opportunity runs through care.
Amit Kumar is Head, Sustainable and Inclusive Growth Unit at UNDP India, and Karina Bhasin is Project Coordinator at UNDP India.