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ABSTRACT
The study demonstrates that in the context of a full-scale war, the intersection of paid and unpaid care work effectively becomes an element of the critical infrastructure of comprehensive defence. Limited opportunities for temporary staff replacement, the destruction of facilities, disruptions in providing services, and fragmented work schedules lead to chronic overburdening of women and undermine the human resource capacity of critical sectors. Based on document analysis, nationwide and online surveys, and 20 in-depth interviews, we observe an increase in work intensity, low and unstable incomes, and a shortage of care services, which directly reduces working hours and increases staff turnover. The recommendations focus on institutional solutions for organising time for care and rest — such as staffing reserves for temporary replacement, vouchers for short-term care services, extended and on-call opening hours of facilities, and a unified information pathway for families — so that additional unpaid labour does not remain the sole mechanism for sustaining the home front but becomes a predictable, resource-backed institutional capacity.
Keywords: care work, comprehensive defence, women, war, double burden, societal resilience
CONTENTS
ACRONYMS
BRIEF SUMMARY
INTRODUCTION
METHODOLOGY
CHAPTER 1. CARE WORK DURING WARTIME: SOCIO-LEGAL AND INFRASTRUCTURE ASPECTS (DESK STUDY)
1.1 Research Context
1.2 Brief Overview of Legislation and Thematic Studies
1.3 Typology of Care Work and Its Key Challenges
1.4 Directions for Future Research
1.5 Summary of Chapter 1
CHAPTER 2. INFRASTRUCTURE CHALLENGES FOR WOMEN AT THE INTERSECTION OF PAID AND UNPAID CARE WORK DURING THE FULL-SCALE INVASION
2.1 Organising Safety During Air Raid Alerts in Educational Institutions as Invisible Labour
2.2 Unmet Needs for Short-Term Care and Challenges in Organising Staff Replacement
2.3 Summary of Chapter 2
CHAPTER 3. ORGANISATIONAL AND LABOUR CHALLENGES DURING WARTIME: STAFF SHORTAGES, UNSTABLE WORK SCHEDULES, AND LOW WAGES
3.1 Institutional Deficit and the Extension of the Working Day
3.2 Income During Wartime: How Financial Vulnerability Intensifies the Double Burden
3.3 Summary of Chapter 3
CHAPTER 4. PSYCHO-EMOTIONAL EXHAUSTION, ANXIETY, AND LACK OF SUPPORT
4.1 Chronic Fatigue, Burnout, and Apathy
4.2 Lack of Time for Self-Care and Guilt Associated with Rest
4.3 Psycho-Emotional Barriers Women Face in Seeking Help
4.4 Summary of Chapter 4
CHAPTER 5. BARRIERS TO ACCESSING SOCIAL SUPPORT AND DISTRUST OF STATE INSTITUTIONS
5.1 Information Barriers in Accessing Social Assistance
5.2 Complexity of Obtaining Statuses and Completing Documentation
5.3 Summary of Chapter 5
CHAPTER 6. “WE ARE HOLDING THE COUNTRY TOGETHER”: WHEN “RESILIENCE” RELIES ON INVISIBLE CARE
6.1 Fatigue, Responsibility, and Indispensability
6.2 The Intersection of Paid and Unpaid Care Work
6.3 Summary of Chapter 6
CHAPTER 7. EVERYDAY PRACTICES OF SELF-ORGANISATION, MUTUAL AID, AND SURVIVAL
7.1 Self-Organisation
7.2 Domestic Support Systems
7.3 Individual Recovery Strategies
7.4 Summary of Chapter 7
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
REFERENCES
APPENDICES
Appendix A. Nationwide Survey Questionnaire
Appendix B. Online Survey Questionnaire
Appendix C. In-depth Interview Guide: “Care Work in Times of War”
BRIEF SUMMARY
This study analyses the intersection of women’s paid and unpaid care work during the full-scale invasion within the framework of comprehensive defence. It examines how institutional failures and service deficits translate into additional hours of invisible labour at home, and conversely, how domestic care constraints limit labour availability in critical sectors (education, healthcare, police/State Emergency Service, and public infrastructure).
The research methodology is based on a mixed-methods approach, combining document analysis (national legislation on guardianship and care, family rights and duties, and state support programs for caregivers), results of a nationwide survey (Info Sapiens, Omnibus CATI, n=1000), an online survey (n=57), and a qualitative study conducted through in-depth interviews (n=20). The research instruments were designed to allow for comparing responses from participants across different methods.
The full-scale war has sharply increased the “value of time” in care-related and critical sectors, while simultaneously dismantling the institutional pillars that maintained the balance between women’s paid and unpaid labour. An institutional staffing deficit (migration, mobilisation, burnout) coincided with an increase in domestic care demands (more children/elderly requiring care, frequent school/kindergarten closures, and limited access to healthcare). The result is an extended workday plus a “second or third shift” at home, leading to chronic exhaustion and schedule instability, which directly reduces the labour availability of key home-front personnel.
The following sections outline the key nodes that make the intersection of paid and unpaid care work particularly vulnerable during wartime.
Infrastructure of Time and Safety.
Women working in preschools and elementary schools face significant challenges during wartime: shelters often cannot accommodate all children and air raid sirens constantly disrupt the schedule. Some classes must be held in shifts or directly in shelters, which lack proper conditions. All this significantly increases the invisible organisational labour of women in kindergartens and lower grades: they arrive early, escort children during evacuations, maintain constant communication with parents, and coordinate the routes between home, school, and the shelter.
For women in essential services (police, State Emergency Service, and healthcare), workplace flexibility is virtually non-existent and short-term care services are unavailable. Consequently, balancing work and caregiving duties is only possible through the support of family members, primarily grandmothers.
Labour Shortages and Lack of Temporary Staffing Mechanisms.
As staff in care professions and critical infrastructure dwindle or depart, those remaining are forced to do the work of two or three people. Since formalised temporary replacement mechanisms are nearly non-existent, substitutions are arranged informally among colleagues. Consequently, institutions survive by siphoning additional “invisible time” from their employees. Upon returning home, these same women face expanded caregiving duties for children, elderly relatives, and persons with disabilities.
Unstable Income Amidst Inflation and Time Scarcity.
In law enforcement and emergency services, bonuses appeared in waves without consistent indexation. In education and healthcare, incomes remained largely stagnant or decreased due to inflationary processes. When women lack even brief breaks for recovery or care arrangements, they are forced to shift to part-time work or miss shifts. As a result, earnings drop precisely when the workload is at its peak. Informal barriers, specifically gender biases, also play a role, influencing management decisions regarding bonuses or career advancement.
Psycho-emotional Exhaustion and Recovery Deficits.
Chronic sleep deprivation, nights disrupted by shelling or air raids, doubling the workload, and a lack of rest lead to persistent apathy and burnout. Seeking support remains rare: only a few use psychologists or support groups; instead, the prevailing mindset is to rely on one’s own strength and horizontal mutual aid.
Informational and Bureaucratic Barriers.
Even those eligible for care-related benefits or legal statuses often do not know where to apply. Procedures are complex and fragmented across different institutions, while legal assistance is prohibitively expensive. In practice, this results in a loss of actual access to resources that could alleviate the care burden.
In response to these challenges, women build their own temporary support frameworks: mutual substitutions in schools and kindergartens, informal flexible scheduling within security forces, neighbourhood care networks for the elderly, and small volunteer groups assisting the wounded and their families. While this allows the system to remain operational, it simultaneously drains private resources of time, health, and finances: informal mutual aid partially substitutes for missing services without providing protection against burnout.
Systemic solutions are required to replace the current climate of instability, where employees rely on informal “peer-to-peer backup.” Care must be integrated into comprehensive defence planning, ensuring allocated time, organised staffing substitutions, sustainable funding, and accessible information.
Policy must institutionalise what communities are already practicing: short-term care, organised staffing substitutions, wage indexation, and a transparent mechanism for accessing social support. Building on our findings, we propose the following measures to enhance the capacity to balance paid and unpaid labour and to strengthen the resilience of comprehensive defence.
Infrastructure of Time, Not Just Place.
Alongside reconstruction and shelters, it is essential to deploy short-term day and night care for those in need: on-call groups for 2-4 hours during the day and evening shifts, micro-daycare centres for the elderly and persons with disabilities close to home, and “social support + transportation” to medical and administrative services. This directly restores paid working hours to shifts and reduces forced absenteeism or underemployment.
Temporary Staffing Mechanisms and Workload-Adjusted Pay.
Establish funded labour reserves for temporary replacements with clear response-time standards (e.g., dedicated substitute positions for preschool and school teachers, and reserve teams for municipal and medical services). Implement base salary indexation and pay scales that reflect actual workload and risks, while formalising guaranteed and predictable work schedules in contracts, adapted to air raid alerts and potential power outages.
Anti-discrimination Safeguards.
Ensure written and transparent criteria for bonuses and promotion decisions are applied, alongside regularly auditing these decisions for gender pay gaps and career advancement disparities. Establish internal channels (including anonymous ones) for reporting informal denials of bonuses, promotions, and professional development opportunities, with mandatory investigations into every case.
Recovery Support.
Introduce short-term care vouchers for essential workers (weekly hours for rest and recuperation), accessible municipal psychological counselling, and basic workplace burnout prevention programs.
Unified Information Circuit.
Create a “Care and Support” portal with simple formulas for obtaining statuses and benefits, standardised document templates, and free primary legal aid; establish in-person help desks at Administrative Service Centres (ASCs) or local administrations for in-person navigation.
Care is the infrastructure of defence: unless institutionalised, we finance “resilience” through the exhaustion of women and the erosion of rear-guard combat readiness. Defence encompasses not only the frontline but also the continuity of education, healthcare, law enforcement, and energy sectors. When a key portion of essential personnel operates at the breaking point, lacking time for both rest and their own caregiving duties, the system gradually loses working hours, full shifts, and, ultimately, the people themselves. Integrating care needs into personnel and operational planning (flexible schedules, substitution systems during leaves or peak loads, wage indexation, and clear information on rights) converts into enhanced combat effectiveness: it reduces staff turnover, facilitates rotations, bolsters service readiness, and makes communities more stable.
The research was conducted by the CSO "Expert Resource Gender in Detail" as part of the project "Gender Mainstreaming in the Context of Comprehensive Defence", funded by the grant “Best Practices of the Swedish Gender Approach as a Tool for Empowering Ukrainian Women to Implement Sustainable Reforms and Promote Ukraine’s European Integration”, with financial support from the Swedish Institute and in partnership with the Swedish International Liberal Centre.
The project draws on gender mainstreaming practices within Sweden’s comprehensive defence system. It represents the first attempt in the Ukrainian context to explore the possibilities of implementing a Swedish-style comprehensive defence strategy in Ukraine while simultaneously integrating a gender perspective across key sectors, including the economy, care work, the armed forces, civil defence, governance, information policy, and the volunteer movement.
The project’s concept author and project lead is Tamara Zlobina, PhD in Philosophy, and Head of the CSO "Expert Resource Gender in Detail".
Project mentors and reviewers of the analytical reports:
Olena Strelnyk, Doctor of Sociological Sciences
Hanna Hrytsenko, Gender Expert
Project managers: Alyona Hruzina, Halyna Repetska
