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Women remain at the center of care work in Brazil even on holidays and days off, accumulating almost 10 more hours per week than men in household and family tasks, exposing a historical overload that mixes inequality, exhaustion, and lack of a support network
Women continue to bear the brunt of care work in Brazil, even on days when most workers can take a break, such as the May 1st holiday. According to official IBGE data, they dedicate almost ten more hours per week to caring for others and the domestic environment, in a routine that involves children, the elderly, house cleaning, shopping, and organizing family life.
The topic was highlighted in Brasília, on Labor Day, based on the analysis of the Social Work professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Cibele Henriques, who has been studying care for years and defines this reality as a kind of 7×0 schedule. According to the researcher, this overload has historical roots, impacts women’s physical, psychological, and social health, and also helps maintain an invisible mechanism that sustains families and society itself.
What it means to say that women live on a 7×0 schedule
The expression used by Cibele Henriques summarizes a reality where rest rarely comes completely for women. Even when there is time off from paid work, free time is often filled with domestic and care tasks that continue to demand effort, attention, and availability.
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In practice, what should be a break turns into more work. The researcher cites the common scene of a sunny holiday that, for many women, does not represent rest, but an opportunity to do laundry, tidy the house, and get ahead on shopping. This helps explain why the idea of a 7×0 schedule makes sense: the work changes form, but it doesn’t stop.
The numbers that explain inequality in care
The central data presented in the text is direct: women dedicate almost ten more hours per week to caring for others and the home, according to IBGE. This number gives concrete dimension to an inequality that often seems naturalized in daily life.
The difference weighs heavily on both those who work exclusively at home and those who face a double shift. In other words, the overload affects both women who dedicate full-time to family care and those who have paid employment outside the home and, even so, remain responsible for a large part of the domestic routine.
Why care still falls primarily on women
For Cibele Henriques, this unequal distribution is not accidental. It is historically constructed by discourses and symbols that associate care with the female figure from childhood. The researcher points out that this process begins early, when boys and girls already receive different stimuli in play and social expectations.
To the boy, the public sphere. To the girl, the private sphere. This separation, according to her, reinforces the idea that everything domestic should remain the woman’s responsibility. Over time, this pattern is compounded by other social discourses that ease the demands on men and increase the pressure on women.
Care as unpaid work that sustains society
One of the central points of Cibele’s analysis is that care cannot be treated merely as a gesture of love or affection. For her, this sentiment often functions as a symbolic justification for the exploitation of female labor that remains unpaid, although it is essential for the reproduction of social life.
The professor summarizes this reasoning with a strong statement: what is often called love, in practice is also unpaid work. This work keeps children, the elderly, and families functioning, but it exacts a high price in terms of time, income, mental health, and the possibility of autonomy.
How overload affects women’s time, income, and health
When women’s time is almost entirely consumed by care, the effect goes beyond fatigue. According to Cibele, there is a real expropriation of time and money, because hours that could be used for rest, study, paid work, or social life end up being directed to caring for others.
This dynamic produces physical, psychological, and social overload. By losing time for themselves, many women also lose space to build independence, preserve mental health, and exercise choices with more freedom. The impact, therefore, is not just domestic. It is economic, emotional, and social.
Why this reality weighs even more heavily on Black and peripheral women
The researcher highlights that this 7×0 scale especially affects Black and peripheral women. According to her, upper-middle-class women can often transfer part of this work, while Black and poor women usually receive this obligation more harshly and without support alternatives.
This makes inequality even deeper. The burden of care does not fall equally on all women, and the combination of gender, class, and race amplifies the overload precisely for those who already face more barriers to income, mobility, and access to support networks.
Divorce, single motherhood, and unequal relationships increase the burden
Cibele also points out practical examples of this inequality in the daily lives of families. One of them appears after divorce, when the woman often takes full responsibility for childcare, while the father’s responsibility is reduced to paying child support.
She points out, however, that in many cases this difference already existed even before the separation. Many women are single mothers within their own marriage, which helps to show how care was already being unequally distributed long before any formal family breakdown.
How care work also connects to gender-based violence
The concentration of care on women does not only produce overload. It also strengthens situations of dependence that can prolong violent relationships. According to the researcher, many women remain in abusive relationships because they do not have their own income and need to continue caring for their children or other family members.
This point amplifies the seriousness of the problem. Care ceases to be merely a topic of domestic routine and begins to connect directly with autonomy, survival, and the possibility of exiting contexts of violence.
What the aging of the population may worsen in the coming years
Cibele warns that Brazil is expected to face an even more delicate situation in the coming years, because the population is aging. This means that more elderly people will need care at the same time that the country will continue to live with many children who also require permanent attention.
Without a more structured policy, the burden tends to continue falling on women. If the demand for care increases and the public support network does not keep up, the female overload deepens even further.
Why the solution also involves the State
In the researcher’s view, the solution does not depend only on cultural change within the home. It also requires stronger participation from the State, with a care policy that organizes a broader support network and reduces the concentrated burden on women.
Today, according to her, the social protection system acts much more to prevent or repair violence and rights violations. Daily care, in normal situations, continues to be treated as a private problem of families and, within them, as a female obligation. For Cibele, a structured care policy could reverse this logic and relieve this woman of the burden.
Why this debate goes far beyond Labor Day
The fact that the topic gains strength precisely on May 1st exposes an important contradiction. While some workers can rest, millions of women remain active at home, maintaining a mechanism that rarely enters the statistics of paid work.
This shows that the discussion about work cannot stop at formal employment. If care remains invisible, inequality also remains hidden. And as long as this routine is treated as a natural obligation for women, full rest will continue to be a privilege that not all can achieve.
If so many women continue living on a 7×0 schedule at home, how long will care work continue to be treated as a silent obligation and not as a responsibility that should truly be shared?
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