Sri Lanka could be doing more to support the care responsibilities of urban working-class women, according to a December 2025 report by the Colombo Urban Lab and Centre for a Smart Future (CSF). The country’s female labour force participation fell to 29.6% in 2024, the lowest in a decade. The report argues that unpaid care work, overwhelmingly carried by women, is a principal reason why.
The findings draw on interviews with 45 working mothers across four sites in Maradana, Gunasinghapura, Kompannaveediya, and Wanathamulla, among a broader group of surveyed participants.
The burden of care, the researchers conclude, falls almost entirely on households. Within households, it falls almost entirely on women.
The Numbers
The study showed a majority of the 45 mothers worked in the informal sector. Only 22% received retirement benefits such as EPF or ETF contributions. Only one third had access to paid leave. 11 of the 45 were domestic workers, earning between Rs1,000 and Rs2,000 a day, with an average monthly salary of about Rs29,000. They did not have sick leave, maternity protections, or formal contracts.
Those working non-standard hours earned an average of around Rs60,000 a month, the highest income category in the study. Part-time workers, who had structured their hours around their children’s school day because they had no other option, earned an average of just under Rs13,000 a month. The lowest recorded income was Rs2,000.
The 2026 budget allocated Rs837 billion to social protection. Of that, Rs231 billion went to the Aswesuma cash transfer programme. Rs0.35 billion was allocated to the development of day care centres.
Who Is Watching the Children
The most common source of childcare among respondents was the mother’s own mother. 13 of the 45 relied on grandmothers as their primary caregiver, and where this arrangement held, women were far more likely to work full-time standard hours and earn predictable salaries ranging from Rs20,000 to Rs120,000 a month. Even then, only 5 of those 13 received retirement benefits, and only 6 could take paid leave.
Such arrangements are prone to disruption. When asked what would happen if their mother fell ill, 7 of those 13 said they would have to stop working entirely. A little over half of the respondents said they were unable to go to work when their child was sick.
Nine respondents relied on older children, most of whom were daughters, to supervise younger siblings. The cost of this was consistently seen in missed schooling and employment opportunities. In no instance was a husband the sole provider of childcare, even when unemployed. Fathers were described, repeatedly, as unwilling or incapable.
Drug use by husbands was cited as an active barrier in several cases. One respondent, Marium, found her estranged husband using her lack of secure childcare to sabotage her employment. He kept their child from attending preschool and intercepted her on the way to work. She eventually missed enough shifts to be replaced.
“He kept their child from attending preschool and intercepted her on the way to work. She eventually missed enough shifts to be replaced.”
When Someone Gets Sick, Women Stop Working
Most respondents had no backup plan when illness struck, whether their own, their child’s, or a family member’s
Colombo Urban Lab and Centre for a Smart Future, Social Protection and Urban Infrastructures of Care in Colombo, December 2025.
The Daycare Gap
Formal daycare use was, in the researchers’ words, “extremely low.” At the time, only one respondent was actively using a daycare. Four others had used one at some point in the past. Marium herself was actively seeking a daycare at the time of her interviews. Without one, she could not transition from unpredictable shift work as a waitress to a full-time cleaning job that would have paid a higher and more reliable salary.
Two models existed in practice. Private daycares cost around Rs30,000 a month and were used only by the two highest-paid, highest-qualified respondents in the sample. Faith-based daycares, run by churches, cost around Rs500 a month, but they were closed to non-Christian families. The overwhelming majority of daycare facilities in Colombo district are privately run.
Cost was only one barrier that prevented daycare use. Mothers were skeptical of the care daycares provided, citing shared stories of neglect and abuse. Some had heard that caregivers sedated children with Piriton antihistamine syrup to keep them manageable and that some facilities withheld water to reduce toilet trips.
One mother, identified by the pseudonym Manjula, visited several facilities before finding one she could tolerate. At one, children lay on a mat with nothing else in the room. The menu at another consisted largely of sweets. “You can’t keep children like that,” she said. “They are not patients.”
Two respondents, a nurse and a member of the armed forces, had access to workplace nurseries but could not use them. Their husbands had refused.
Relocated and Cut Off
Respondents who had been relocated from informal settlements to high-rise apartments reported being physically separated from the extended family networks that had previously enabled them to work.
Communities shared the familiarity of knowing everyone on the street. One mother described how, if her child had a fall while she was at work, neighbours would take him to hospital before she even heard about it.
In the high-rise, this communal oversight did not exist. Residents did not know their neighbours. Children could not play in corridors without disturbing elderly or sick residents. Mothers described locking their children inside apartments for entire afternoons, disconnecting the gas, and instructing children not to open the door. For these families, screen time was, in the researchers’ words, “the only entertainment.”
Relocation also cut domestic workers off from their clients. High-rise residents no longer lived near the wealthier households that had previously employed them, making finding work harder and commutes longer in areas poorly served by public transport.
“Part-time workers, who had structured their hours around their children’s school day because they had no other option, earned an average of under Rs13,000 a month.”
Night Work and the Double Shift
8 of the 45 respondents had experience of night work, 6 regularly. All but one worked in hospitality. None described it as a choice. The physical toll was compounded by the fact that domestic responsibilities did not pause for night shifts. One respondent, a cook who finished at 10.30pm or later, returned home to carry out laundry and housework before starting again. Another, who occasionally worked nights, found it impossible to sleep during the day because her children would wake her.
“Women will need time to recover,” one respondent said, “but instead she will do all of the other work in the house and go back to work the next night.” Night work also carried a social cost. Marium, for instance, turned down shifts at hotels in Mount Lavinia and Bentota because returning after midnight would invite community judgement.
A One-sided Lack of Time
21 of the 45 respondents were solely responsible for both cooking and housework, with no support from anyone else in the household. 28 did all the cooking alone; 28 did all the housework alone. Husbands and sons were consistently described as unwilling or considered culturally exempt. “He’s a boy so he doesn’t do much,” a respondent said. This sentiment appeared, in various forms, across multiple interviews.
One respondent worked the same shifts as her husband at a tea packing factory, both days and nights, beginning at 8am and finishing the following day at 7am. When the shift ended, he went to sleep. She went to the market, came home, did the laundry, and cooked, because otherwise there would be nothing for the children when they returned from school. By the time she slept, it was 2pm.
Most respondents got six or fewer hours of sleep a night. Only the highest-paid respondent in the study, Manjula, described being able to seek this time for herself. Earning Rs120,000 a month, she had recently started allowing herself the occasional book. “After I left my mother’s house,” she said, “there has not really been any time for me to spend for myself.”
What the Report Recommends
The report’s recommendations centre on treating care as infrastructure rather than a household obligation. It calls for community-based daycare centres with extended hours, staffed and managed by trained local residents.
The report also suggests expanding school meal programmes beyond Grade 5. Already, 19 of the 45 respondents had at least one child receiving a free school meal, which the Colombo Municipal Council supports with an allowance of Rs100 per child per meal. The report found such programmes have proven to be a rare source of income compatible with childcare.
Two respondents worked as meal servers at schools, earning as little as Rs300 a day, specifically because the hours aligned with the school day and the holidays aligned with their children’s. “That is why I go,” one said, “even for such a small amount. No one else would go work for such a small amount.”