INTER AGENCY AND EXPERT GROUP MEETING ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF GENDER STATISTICS New York, 12-14 December 2006

1. United Nations Economic Commission for Africa Addressing the missing link between Gender and Poverty analysis: Time Use INTER AGENCY AND EXPERT GROUP MEETING ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF GENDER STATISTICS New York, 12-14 December 2006

2. Women’s work burden: a daily reality INTER AGENCY AND EXPERT GROUP MEETING ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF GENDER STATISTICS New York, 12-14 December 2006 INTER AGENCY AND EXPERT GROUP MEETING ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF GENDER STATISTICS New York, 12-14 December 2006

3. Time use cuts accross all dimensions of poverty Energy Entrepreneurship Transport Income Nutrition Environment Labor Education Rights Water Agriculture Infrastructure Trade Health Etc.

4. Gender division of labor • Socially defined gender roles condition which activities, tasks and responsibilities are perceived as male or female • Women are primary responsible for domestic tasks such as: • Fetching water and firewood • Processing food crops • Caring for children, the elderly, the sick, the orphans and other members of the family.The HIV/Aids pandemic has exacerbated the burden of care. Etc…

5. Gender division of labor • Women also carry out productive roles and community managing roles. • Men are considered as breadwinners and are primary responsible for performing productive tasks – production of goods and services either for sale, exchange, or to meet the subsistence needs of the family-and community politics roles. • Women’s roles are critical for social reproduction, economic growth and sustainable development. (Production and nurturing of labor force)

6. Gender division of labor • Inherent power relations lead to assymetries in work burden, and in the way women and men’s work is valued, accounted for and remunerated. • Unequal value placed on women’s roles is mainly responsible for women’s inferior status and observed persistent gender discrimination.

7. Gender division of labor • Women’s simultaneous competing claims and limited time for each of them make them time poor. • Women’s time poverty is exacerbated by their lack of access to basic social services.

8. Gender and time use: key issues • Invisibility • GNP covers at best 60% of all valuable production and labor market employment statistics cover less than 50 percent of all work performed… the regularly published labor statistics cover perhaps 75 percent of men’s work and 33 percent of women’s work. Ironmonger, 1999

9. Gender and time use: key issues • Sequencing: simultaneity, multitasking • Intensity • Absence of choice, ‘incompressibility’ • Inelasticity of the gender division of labor • Trade offs

10. Gender and time use: key issues • In Tanzania, a reduction in women’s time burden led to increase in household income by 10%, labour productivity by 15% and productivity of capital by 44. Tibaijuka,1994

11. Gender differentiated time use patterns • Social and cultural norms • Geographicaland socio economic factors • Household composition and life cycle issues • Seasonal and farm system considerations • Etc…

12. Gender, poverty and time use: analytical frameworks Trends in poverty analysis • 1970-80: focus on economic growth as the ‘sole’ engine for achieving development. Market Economic Poverty growth reduction • 1980-90: ‘Efficiency’ paradigm with the implementation of SAP. Focus on stabilizing economies and responding to the debt crisis

13. Gender, poverty and time use: analytical frameworks • From the 1990s: Development of alternative development theories • Strong criticism of SAPs: failure to analyse and mainstream social and gender dimensions in economic reforms. • More focus on social dimensions, gender aspects, non market behaviours, property rights, institutions… as key factors that shape development • Opportunities to address other gender dimensions of poverty such as ‘time poverty’ and ‘energy poverty’

14. Gender, poverty and time use: analytical frameworks • Capability and human development approach (A. Sen): broadened the scope for the conceptual analysis of poverty from a multidimensional perspective • Dimension 1: Lack of capabilities • Dimension 2: Lack of opportunities • Dimension 3: Disempowerment • Dimension 4: Vulnerability

15. Gender, poverty and time use: analytical frameworks • Feminists economists challenged the underlying assumptions in conventional economics • Macroeconomics is about aggregates and the policy objectives, outcomes and intruments are gender neutral • Household are ‘only’ consumption units • Women’s capacity to undertake unpaid domestic labor is ‘infinitely’ elastic. ‘Women’s unpaid care work is a tax they must pay in kind before being able to undertake any productive (remunerated) activities’, Diane Elson, Ingrid Palmer, Mariama Williams, etc…

16. Time poverty and lack of capabilities • Time poverty limits women and girls capacities to fully use their potentials to participate in and benefit from development processes. • E.g. household chores constraints young girls’ performance at school

17. Time poverty and lack of opportunities • Because of the competing demands on their time, and gender discrimination in access to productive assets, women are less likely to: • Take full advantage ofeconomic opportunities • Respond to changing market conditions and incentives • Participate in income generating activities.

18. Time poverty and lack of opportunities ‘Where women heads of household have no other adult women to fulfil home production or domestic roles, they face greater time and mobility constraints than do male heads or other women, that in turn leads to lower paying jobs more compatible with child care…. Evidence from Malawi indicate that female farmers were inclined to limit their labor time in farm activities due to a heavy commitment to domestic chores, while responsibility for children and housekeeping made it difficult for female heads to opt for regular or off-farm labor activities to increase their earnings. Buvinic and Rao Gupta, 1997’.

19. Time poverty and disempowerment • Lack of time and capacity to get involved in community managing and politics roles • Women’s little participation in policy making is a constraint to addressing gender equality concerns and women’s specific issues in the development agenda and poverty reduction strategies

20. Time poverty and vulnerability to risks and shocks • Women’s workload present various risks: • Maternal health and child development and protection • Fetching polluted water • Preparing and cooking meals in degraded and polluted environment • Inhaling smoke while cooking with firewood A high level of acute respiratory infections are related to exposure to air pollutants (Green 2005, Uganda)

21. Time poverty and vulnerability to risks and shocks ‘Several studies suggest that workload constraints limit the likelihood that children will be taken to health post for vaccination, or that sick children or family members will access health care in a timely manner’. ‘There is a critically small ‘window of opportunity’ for addressing undernutrition in children, which in turn hinges on timely access to food, including time for breastfeeding and timely preparation of meals in the first two years of life – a period in which, according to time use survey data, women with young children are likely to be especially heavily burdened with work’. (World Bank 2006)

22. Some avenues • Strengthen the capacity of national statistical offices and national accountants in time use studies • Leverage political and financial support for undertaking time use studies • Mainstream time use in poverty diagnosis, national policy making, programme planning and budgeting • Invest in labor saving technology • Broaden the 1993 System of national accounts to encompass all areas of work • Research to sharpen the analysis on gender and time use and linkages with other developmental areas (child labor, women’s labor force participation, etc…) • Define methodologies to overcome data related challenges (e.g. capuring simultaneity and intensity of work).

23. What is ECA doing? • Capacity building: six sub-regional training workshops organised • Development of tools • Easy Reference Guidebook on Mainstreaming Unpaid Work and Household Production in National Statistics, Policies and Programmes • Gender Aware Macroeconomic Model: A macro and micro policy simulation was undertaken of the South African economy. The simulations demonstrated that policy shocks such as trade liberalization have differential impact on men and women’s market work, unpaid care work, wage, income and welfare.