Technology Helps: How do we give women their time back? 

This article was sparked by a conversation with my friend, who asked me what I would name Alexa, which I am still thinking about. Consider this my way of giving credit to my muse. But as often happens, my mind wandered far beyond the question itself. It took me back to a concept I wrote about a few months ago: time poverty. Time poverty is the chronic lack of sufficient time for rest, personal choice, and self-development because of the overwhelming burden of care and domestic responsibilities, a burden that continues to fall disproportionately on women across the world.

While we work to change the norms, what can we do about the reality women are living right now? How can technology help? Time poverty produces deteriorating life outcomes. The things that suffer are health, learning opportunities, rest, mental capacity, social capital, leadership opportunities, and ultimately longevity. Women often spend years caring for everyone except themselves, leaving little time to invest in their own growth, wellbeing, or economic advancement.

In many ways, this is the human capital cost of time poverty. It is what happens when women spend decades performing repetitive labour that could be reduced, streamlined, or automated. It is what happens when time that could have been invested in education, innovation, leadership, relationships, or health is consumed by tasks that technology is increasingly capable of performing more efficiently.

So perhaps this article is less about Alexa and more about a question that sits at the heart of gender-responsive development: How do we give women their time back?

Gender Norms and the Assumption That Women’s Time Is Available
Time poverty does not emerge by accident. It is produced by gender norms that shape how society values and allocates women’s time.

Across many cultures, women are expected to absorb a disproportionate share of caregiving, household management, emotional labour, and community responsibilities. The expectation is often so normalized that women remember birthdays, organize family events, monitor children’s wellbeing, care for ageing relatives, manage household supplies, prepare meals, and coordinate countless activities that keep families functioning. The consequence is not simply that women work hard. It is that they lose time.

They lose time for simply leading fulfilling lives, learning, and acquiring new skills. They lose time for rest and health while carrying out physically demanding domestic and informal sector activities that contribute to chronic fatigue and long-term health challenges. They lose time for mental wellbeing while carrying the invisible cognitive burden of managing households and families. They lose time for leadership, networking, and career advancement.

In fact, many women experience what I increasingly describe as the double time poverty of the informal economy. They are economically active, but economic activity is not the same as economic mobility. They remain responsible for household labour while earning income through occupations that are themselves extensions of their traditional roles, such as catering, domestic work, small-scale trading, beauty services, or home-based production. They work long hours in both spheres, yet often remain trapped in low-productivity activities with limited growth opportunities.

I was reminded of this while watching a documentary that sought to challenge gender norms. The story followed a woman whose father-in-law became ill shortly after she had begun pursuing her passion for hairdressing. Her husband’s family expected her to abandon her ambitions and assume caregiving responsibilities. Eventually, she started a salon from her home so she could continue earning an income while caring for her father-in-law.

During the panel discussion that followed the screening, which I participated in, many people praised her resilience. But I found myself asking a different question: was this truly empowerment, or was it adaptation to an inequitable situation? Because we have to be careful that solutions are not merely tiptoeing around the situation.

One of the most insightful comments came from the only man. He asked us to imagine if the woman had been an accountant instead. Would anyone have expected her to provide accounting services from her living room while simultaneously acting as a full-time caregiver?

This is why gender-responsive solutions matter. While transforming social norms is essential, it is often a long-term process. Women need solutions now. Technology, therefore, is not simply about convenience. It is about protecting women’s time, health, productivity, and human potential. In many ways, it is preventive healthcare, economic infrastructure, and gender-responsive development all rolled into one.

Technology, Time, and Human Capital: Why Saving Women’s Time Is a Development Strategy
If time poverty steals women’s potential, then time-saving infrastructure may be one of the most overlooked tools for protecting it. It protects human capital and prevents the gradual depletion of human capital over a woman’s lifetime. Here are examples of development investment in time-saving infrastructure

Learning Infrastructure: Making Education Fit Women’s Lives
India’s Common Service Centres (CSCs) offer one example of what a different learning approach can look like. Located within communities, these digital access hubs provide subsidized vocational, language, and digital literacy training through short, modular programmes that women can fit around existing responsibilities.

Physical Infrastructure: Reducing the Labour Burden
In parts of Rajasthan, India, and Kenya, innovations such as the Hippo Roller and Wello Water Wheel have transformed water collection by allowing women to roll large quantities of water rather than carrying heavy containers over long distances. Closer to home, agro-processing centres across Nigeria and Ghana have introduced mechanized cassava processing, grain milling, and food processing services that replace hours of physically demanding manual labour.

Care Infrastructure: Reducing the Mental Load
Bogotá’s pioneering Manzanas de Cuidado (Care Blocks) offers a compelling model. These neighbourhood-based centres combine childcare, laundry facilities, eldercare services, education programmes, and psychosocial support in one location, giving women opportunities to rest, study, or pursue economic activities while care responsibilities are supported.

Economic Infrastructure: Making Markets More Accessible
In Kenya, Twiga Foods has built digital supply chains that connect small traders directly to suppliers, reducing the need for market women to spend early mornings travelling long distances to wholesale markets. In China’s urban communities, group-buying platforms have streamlined household procurement by aggregating neighbourhood demand and organising direct deliveries, significantly reducing time spent on routine shopping.

Workplace Infrastructure: Protecting Women’s Career Continuity
Many multinational organisations have increasingly adopted asynchronous work systems supported by digital collaboration tools such as Slack, Notion, and AI-enabled meeting platforms. These approaches allow women to remain engaged and productive without being disadvantaged by rigid schedules. In parts of Europe and North America, employers increasingly provide access to emergency childcare and eldercare networks, ensuring that unexpected care disruptions do not immediately derail women’s participation in the workforce.

Informal Economy Infrastructure: Where Time Poverty Is Most Severe
Nigeria’s growing network of solar-powered cold storage facilities, including ColdHubs, demonstrates how infrastructure can reduce time pressure on women farmers by extending the shelf life of produce and reducing the need for immediate distress sales.

Across parts of Tanzania, clean-energy microgrids have supported small-scale food processors and commercial vendors by powering labour-saving equipment that reduces food preparation times and protects women from prolonged exposure to smoke.

Final Thoughts
While it was fun to imagine what I might name my personal Alexa or future household robot, I am conscious of my privilege. Access to technology is not evenly distributed. Many women continue to experience a gendered digital divide, shaped by affordability constraints, unequal access to devices and connectivity, and socialisation that has historically excluded women from technology adoption and use.

The bigger challenge is ensuring that time-saving technologies are embedded into the systems and infrastructure that women interact with every day—our markets, health systems, workplaces, communities, public services, farms, and homes.

As part of the Women in Leadership Coalition of WISCAR, WIMBIZ, WILAN, and the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, this conversation matters deeply to me. Our ongoing advocacy for reforms such as 16 weeks of maternity leave and 14 days of paternity leave reflects a broader belief that women need adequate support structures to participate fully in society and the economy.

Perhaps one of the most important questions we should be asking is this: how much of women’s potential is being lost simply because our systems continue to consume their time?