HMN 2025: How Social gender norms deepen elderly care burdens for Thai women

As Thailand has experienced a rapid increase in its elderly population, a new study published in World Development has found that “social gender norms”—shared beliefs about how “altruistic” women or men should be in society—are overburdening women in the country with elderly care.

Alongside Dr. Minh Tam Bui from Srinakharinwirot University in Thailand and Professor Ivo Vlaev from the National University of Singapore, The University of Manchester’s Dr. Katsushi Imai analyzed national time-use survey data covering over 70,000 Thai adults to see how men and women care for their elderly family members. The study shows that women offering elderly care spend 2 to 2.5 hours on unpaid elder care each day—far more than men.

This imbalance is partly due to the social norm about how “altruistic” women or men should be in society. In many communities in Thailand—particularly in rural areas—this social norm often forces women to be more altruistic than men as caregivers, because men are supposed to work outside. In areas with stronger gender norms, men spend much less time on elderly care than women do. Dr. Bui emphasized the importance of digging deeper into the roots of caregiving inequality:

“We all know that there is a persistent gender care gap—women carry more of the burden in childcare, elder care and household work nearly everywhere in the world—but the underlying reasons for this are often understudied. We wanted to find out why and how this happens by looking at social gender norms around altruistic behavior.”

“We found that women swap paid work for elderly caregiving, but men do not. This unequal division of care responsibilities can lead to gender gaps in employment and well-being, and is worrying in terms of achieving both equality and efficiency in Thailand,” she added.

The research team urges policymakers to recognize the value of unpaid elderly care, allocate more budget for long-term care insurance, and introduce nationwide campaigns to encourage men to engage in family care duties. This would help the country achieve UN Sustainable Development Goal 5 on gender equality by offering critical insights for building more equitable care systems and behavioral change in aging societies.

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