From “I Don’t Have Time” to “I Have Time”: The Time We Create by Sharing Care

How often do we say or hear “Nemam ti kad” (“I Don’t Have Time”)? It sounds like an ordinary phrase, said during a rushed morning, over a coffee postponed for another day, or because a task has been put off until tomorrow. Yet for many women in Bosnia and Herzegovina, it describes much more: days filled with cooking, cleaning, planning, taking children to school or appointments, supporting an older family member, caring for a person with a disability, and trying to make sure everyone else’s needs are met before their own.

“Nemam ti kad” often follows the most ordinary wishes and plans: “I should get a haircut”, “I haven’t seen you in ages”, or “I’ve always wanted to complete an English course”.

That everyday phrase became the title of UN Women’s 2023 campaign on the care economy. The “Nemam ti kad” campaign made visible the work that is essential to every household and to society as a whole, yet is still too often taken for granted as women’s responsibility alone. The campaign built on the Baseline Study on the Care Economy in Bosnia and Herzegovina, prepared by the Economic Institute Sarajevo in partnership with UN Women in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with the support of Sweden. Through public events across Bosnia and Herzegovina, social media, video stories, influencers, policy dialogues and media coverage, an experience largely treated as private was brought into the sphere of public debate. The messages were clear: care work has no gender; sharing care responsibilities opens up new opportunities and improves the lives of those who currently carry most of this work alone.

Care is work, even when it is unpaid

The care economy includes direct care for children, older people, people who are ill and persons with disabilities, as well as the domestic work that makes such care possible—from preparing meals and cleaning to arranging appointments and managing the household. It also includes paid work in health care, preschool and school education, social protection, residential care institutions, childcare services, and home care and assistance services. This is work that supports people throughout their lives and enables every other sector of the economy to function.

The study showed how unevenly this work is distributed. Women in Bosnia and Herzegovina spend almost twice as much time each day on unpaid care and domestic work as men. At least once a day, 85% of women cooked, compared with 27% of men. These are not simply differences in family routines. Added up over weeks and years, they shape who has time to find employment, pursue education, start a business, participate in public life, rest, exercise or care for their own health.

The unequal distribution of care responsibilities is also linked to gaps in available services. At the time the Baseline Study was conducted, only 31.4% of respondents used childcare services, while data from 2020 showed that more than 6,500 children who had applied for enrolment in preschool institutions could not be admitted because of insufficient capacity. Nearly half of respondents spent ten hours a week caring for older people, and 72% believed that adequate and affordable services for older people were lacking in both the public and private sectors. When services are unavailable, inadequate or unaffordable, the work does not disappear. Families take it on—and within families, most often women.

The conversation about care must also include those who provide it professionally: workers in health care, education and social protection, childcare workers, personal assistants, and providers of home care and assistance services. They form the backbone of services on which individuals, families and communities depend, and women make up the majority of the workforce in this sector. According to the 2026 Care Jobs and Policy Investment Analysis, the care sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina employs around 125,000 people, nearly 72% of whom are women. Women account for around 99% of employees in preschool education, approximately three quarters of teaching staff in primary schools, and 76% of employees in centres for social work.

Many of these women therefore move from a paid shift caring for others into a second, unpaid shift at home. Yet the high social value of their work is not always matched by its economic value. Some care occupations are underpaid, insecure or informal; occupational and qualification standards do not exist for certain jobs, and workers’ practical experience is not always formally recognised. People providing home care and assistance services or childcare may be pushed into the informal economy because there is no clear framework that allows them to register and work with adequate protection.

The social importance of care must also be reflected in the position of those who perform this work, through decent wages, safe working conditions, opportunities for skills development and advancement, and participation in decisions that affect their work. Transforming care therefore requires much more than redistributing household tasks. The International Labour Organization’s (ILO) 5R Framework offers a more comprehensive direction: recognise the value of care work, reduce unpaid care work, redistribute responsibility, reward care work through decent working conditions, and ensure the representation of care workers and care recipients in decision-making.

From “Nemam ti kad” to “Imam ti kad”

The continuation of the campaign under the slogan “Imam ti kad” shifts the original message towards possibility. The change is small in words but significant in meaning. It invites us to imagine what becomes possible when responsibility for care no longer falls disproportionately on one person: time for education, professional development, paid work, entrepreneurship, health, friendships, creativity, political participation or simply rest. Time is not a luxury. It is a prerequisite for autonomy, opportunity and well-being.

“Imam ti kad” is about a family in which time is not created because one person does almost everything, but because everyone takes their share of responsibility. When care work is shared more fairly, families gain more time for life together, women gain more time for their own needs and opportunities, men have more space to participate equally in family life, and children see that care has no gender. Men and boys are therefore not occasional helpers, but equal participants in care. Their involvement can challenge stereotypes, strengthen relationships and show children that competence, tenderness and responsibility do not belong to only one gender. The next phase of the campaign therefore places particular emphasis on engaging men and boys and on dialogues that make shared care visible and commonplace.

Sharing responsibilities within the household is necessary, but families cannot redistribute what is not available to them. A shortage of kindergarten places cannot be solved by dividing responsibilities differently within the family. Likewise, a family cannot use affordable home care and assistance services if the community does not provide them. A person working in the care sector cannot turn informal work into decent employment without recognition, standards and protection. The shift from “Nemam ti kad” to “Imam ti kad” must therefore take place simultaneously at multiple levels: in households, workplaces, communities, public services and budgets.

Care is infrastructure

More recent data show the scale of this challenge. The 2026 Care Jobs and Policy Investment Analysis estimates that formal preschool education reaches only around 25 to 30% of children from birth to six years of age. Formal home care and assistance services are available to fewer than 1,000 of the estimated 60,000 to 90,000 older people who need support. Bosnia and Herzegovina allocates considerably more to cash benefits than to developing care services that could prevent exclusion, create jobs and reduce the burden of unpaid care work.

Investment in care is therefore not merely social spending. It is an investment in human potential, women’s economic participation, decent local jobs, child development, ageing with dignity and more resilient communities. The same analysis estimates that women would account for between 85 and 95% of newly employed workers under scenarios of increased investment in the care sector. This represents an important opportunity for women’s employment, but the goal of transformation is not to reinforce the belief that care is women’s work. The development of the sector must also attract more men while ensuring decent working conditions, adequate wages and opportunities for advancement for all workers.

Well-designed care policies deliver two benefits at the same time: they enable people carrying the burden of unpaid responsibilities to enter the labour market or remain employed, while also creating formal, socially valuable jobs in services that communities need.

The “Imam ti kad” campaign translates this systemic message into everyday language. Through activities with citizens, including the Who Cares? games planned in Sarajevo, Banja Luka and Brčko, it invites us to consider who performs care work, who has time because someone else is providing care, and what would change if responsibility were truly shared.

Investment in care is therefore not merely social spending. It is an investment in human potential, women’s economic participation, decent local jobs, child development, ageing with dignity and more resilient communities. The same analysis estimates that women would account for between 85 and 95% of newly employed workers under scenarios of increased investment in the care sector. This represents an important opportunity for women’s employment, but the goal of transformation is not to reinforce the belief that care is women’s work. The development of the sector must also attract more men while ensuring decent working conditions, adequate wages and opportunities for advancement for all workers.

Well-designed care policies deliver two benefits at the same time: they enable people carrying the burden of unpaid responsibilities to enter the labour market or remain employed, while also creating formal, socially valuable jobs in services that communities need.

The “Imam ti kad” campaign translates this systemic message into everyday language. Through activities with citizens, including the Who Cares? games planned in Sarajevo, Banja Luka and Brčko, it invites us to consider who performs care work, who has time because someone else is providing care, and what would change if responsibility were truly shared.

The Time We Create Together

The “Nemam ti kad” campaign named a reality that many people, especially women, know well. “Imam ti kad” names a future we can build: not a future without care, but one in which care is visible, valued and fairly shared. A future in which a woman does not have to choose between earning an income and meeting her family’s needs; in which a care worker is not expected to accept poor working conditions because her work is considered natural; in which an older person can receive support without exhausting family members; and in which children grow up seeing care as a human responsibility rather than a duty of women.

So the question is not only: “Do you have time?” It is also: Who makes that time possible? Who carries the burden of work that remains invisible? And what must families, employers, communities and institutions change so that we can all say: “Imam ti kad”? Only then does “Imam ti kad” stop being a slogan and become a real possibility.

The continuation of the “Nemam ti kad” campaign is being carried out as part of the Gender Equality Accelerator joint programme, implemented by United Nations agencies in Bosnia and Herzegovina—UN Women, UNDP, UNFPA and UNICEF—with financial support from the European Union and the Governments of Denmark and Sweden, in cooperation with the Agency for Gender Equality of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Gender Centre of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Centre for Equity and Equality between Women and Men of Republika Srpska.