" The Contribution of Women from the Lowest Income Groups to the Economy:

How Time-Use Studies can Enable an Accurate Valuation”

Devaki Jain*Member erstwhile South Commission

Currently Council member , National Institute of Advanced Studies

I want to suggest three things: focus our attention on women from the lowest income

and no-income decile replacing our quest to integrate unpaid work into

macroeconomic frameworks with integrating unrecognized work of all types into the

same.

We carry the learning we receive from: Analyzing the burdens, the undervaluation of women’s

work The inequality they address due to the stereotyping of

roles To a critique of macro-economic reasoning, beyond the

minimalist goal of gender equality.

I would like to locate my proposals

• Within the context of continents of the South, i.e. Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia and the Pacific,

• Looking at the patterns of work and deprivation that women in these regions experience

• Recognize that after the economic shocks of 2008-2009, a new world order has emerged, global economic power has shifted from the North to the South.

• Another global crisis is on its way

• As feminists of the South, we need to shift our approach to public policy

• Must move away from old economic theories such as the trickle-down theory with policies that focus on GDP growth and surplus

• Policies should take poor women as the engines of growth, as the beginning of public policy and macroeconomic reasoning.

• Should not be limited to gender equality in sharing of work, but expanded into public investment in social infrastructure and gendering national budgets.

• We should be arguing for another economics- one in which care is also embedded, as it is a phenomenon that affects women across class and cultural divides.

• We should be asking whether the woman in the lowest economic situation can redefine economic reasoning.

• Women, especially from the poorest households, are the most neglected but most valuable contributors to the growth of the economy.

• Time-use studies provide the evidence for this hypothesis, as well as provide support to these pillars of the society and economy. This is examined at a later stage of the paper.

This goal of gender equality and women’s empowerment is language that we have adopted from international mandates, especially those of the UN.

Making this into a global agenda has closed our eyes to differentiating our priorities from the conditions of difference.

Furthermore, these goals are not attainable without major changes to the macro economy and the pressures from outside

The debate should go beyond measurement of care work and its sharing, into the measurement of women’s contribution even to the SNA type of productive work

Their location in the economies and how that location’s identification as well as circumstances can give value and visibility to that contribution

Transform the way we think of development offers, development policy, and engines of growth.

It would alter the very measures of progress.

The important questions are :-- Are the GDP and GNP useful measures?- Does the HDI offer a satisfactory substitute? - Are tools of valuation appropriate or have we other

tools?

• If we measure work by time, then women in the developing countries come out on top, as the most valuable people, as they spend more hours on everything than men.

• So should time and not money or monetized value be the measure of value?

• In 1975, I undertook a time use study in 6 villages in India. The results revealed strong variations across class, caste and culture, not just economic zones, in the work life of women and children.

• In the mainstream economic data collections and policy formulation spaces in India, women were considered secondary bread winners (with males being the primary ones)

Women from landless households had a formal labour force participation rate of 74% which was higher than their men.

So, I challenged the perception that women were

supplementary bread winners which is the way the formal statistical system sees women. The “aam aurat“ (common women) were actually the main support, i.e. the primary breadwinners for their households

I had collected the data not only across land classes, but also

of children above 5 years [the detailed methodology which was observation and recording every half hour in every household six times over the year] showed the strong differences between boys and girls in access to leisure or education.

We later carried the findings forward to show that women had a self-perception of ‘not doing anything’ when in fact they may have been weeding, cutting grass, and any number of other activities

Why were we keen to show that they were formally economically active without taking note of the 3 Cs – Cooking, Childcare and Cleaning?

We wanted skills development, tools to improve their productivity and ease the strains, occupational hazard protection, apart from identification in the occupational tables which would entitle them to wages, and also enable the state to be aware of displacement.

I will illustrate from India both 1 The value of time use studies, but specific to

hypothesis or to alleviate burden or to prove the value of women's work to productive sectors

2. That dealing with the macro economic policy signals and directions as a template , as a blackboard and then putting our knowledge including time use, is valuable

3. I argue that such a contribution by us is more valuable to poor women than pointing out gender inequality or even the measuring care work or changing of roles

Working Group of Feminist Economists (WGFE) to gender the Eleventh Five-Year Plan (2007-2012). The members included scholars who had worked in the field as well as data experts on different sectors of the economy.

Their inputs were directly introduced into the 2007-2012 Plan. A few illustrations of change are laid in the following slide.

Knowledge drawn from:-◦Data base ◦Specialization base ◦Knowledge which could be called voice drawn

from the broad based consultations◦Leading to significant inclusions in the 11th Plan

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WGFE’S Sector specific Inputs Achievements in the 11th Plan

Agriculture

To recognize that women are increasingly the main cultivators, Enhance women’s land and infrastructure access; Skill training in farm technology maintenance; Group approach for supporting women farmers

Recognizes that 85% of farmers who are small and marginal are increasingly women. And therefore women’s names should be recorded as cultivators in revenue records. Also, gender bias in institutions for information, credit, inputs, marketing should be corrected by gender-sensitizing the existing infrastructure providers

Industry

Globalization has induced feminization of indebtedness; increasing asset lessness, fall in real wages; declining in the conditions of work. Scheme designs should target women and recognize that it is more difficult for women to be successful in self employment. And requires capacity building, financial literacy, account keeping, etc.

Highlights the need to integrate social security cover sensitive to women’s special needs. It stresses the need to ensure equal wages, adequate protection and infrastructure. Recognizes that the vulnerabilities associated to the MSE sector especially affect women and children

.

Towards Women’s Agency and Child Rights

To ensure that schemes are transforming gender roles and constructs, not reinforcing gender stereotypes by adding up to women’s unpaid and reproductive work and Strengthen the capacity of Gender Budget Cells (now in 56 ministries and departments) so that they conduct GRB as an annual accounting

Pointed out that the performance however has been far from satisfactory”. The Gender Budgeting and Gender Outcome assessment will be encouraged in all ministries/departments at central and state levels

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WGFE’S Sector specific Inputs Achievements in the 11th Plan

Healthcare, Family Welfare and Clean Living Conditions

Recognizing that besides themselves suffering form ill-health, women are severely affected by the morbidity and mortality within families as they not only have to cope with the impoverishment caused by ill-health but also with additional burden of care

“The strong links between poverty and ill health need to be recognized. The onset of a long and expensive illness can drive the non-poor into poverty. Ill health creates immense stress even among those who are financially secure. High health care costs can lead to entry into or exacerbation of poverty.”

Education

It is imperative for educational planning to pay specific attention to recruitment of female teachers –and form different social groups. Enrollment Ratio form 51,7% to 75%. Opening of schools exclusively for girls to overcome gender disparity on access to education

Aim towards major reduction in gender, social, and regional gaps in enrolments, dropouts and school retention (…) The GER in secondary education is targeted to increase form 52% in 2004-05 to 75% by 2011. Acknowldged the need for measures to be undertaken to overcome obstacles to girl’s education

Water and Sanitation

Need to mention the long distances that are traveled by women in their daily search for water. References to the need of nearby covered toilets that provide dignity to women

Acknowledges that “women and girls spend hours fetching water and that drudgery should be unnecessary and recognised that lack of covered toilets imposes a severe hardship on women and girls

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WGFE’S Sector specific Inputs Achievements in the 11th Plan

Healthcare, Family Welfare and Clean Living Conditions

Recognizing that besides themselves suffering form ill-health, women are severely affected by the morbidity and mortality within families as they not only have to cope with the impoverishment caused by ill-health but also with additional burden of care

“The strong links between poverty and ill health need to be recognized. The onset of a long and expensive illness can drive the non-poor into poverty. Ill health creates immense stress even among those who are financially secure. High health care costs can lead to entry into or exacerbation of poverty.”

Environment and Climate Change

Recognizing that women are the principle users of forests and that they are thus especially affected by forest degradation and the principle stakeholders in forest conservation.

Women should be an integral part of community-centered ecotourism given their extensive knowledge of biodiversity. This could also provide a new source of income for educated women in the villages.

Acknowledges women as the “principal stakeholders in natural resources use and management.” It affirms “the participation of women should be ensured in all community activities and the decisions should be based on their considered opinion.” community-based programs should therefore be gender-responsive.

We in the southern continents need to throw off the inherited concepts vocabularies as well as advisories

We need to redefine as well as re-name categories

In the following slides I will show how vocabulary , nomenclature oppresses as well as misdirects us

Another type of distortion, this time coming from the language and the vocabulary used to describe economic phenomena from the early industrialized countries of the North. To illustrate:-

If the home is called ‘workplace’ as indeed it is for the majority of women in the global South, then work at home would be recognized as work which can come under labour laws.  

Home-based workers are now recognized for labour welfare protection as a result of our advocacy. “Formal/informal” and “organized/unorganized”.

The so-called informal sector is very formal, but it is controlled in different ways from the factory floor

Similarly, the unorganized sector is extremely organized but in different ways.

Most of these forms are exploitative and unless named and understood correctly, they cannot be dealt with. These are names given to economic spaces and forms of work, and they are misnomers if seen from Africa or Asia

It is useful to change nomenclature for policy and analysis.

I have illustrated from India both 1. The value of time use studies, but specific to

hypothesis or to alleviate burden or to prove the value of women's work to productive sectors

2. That dealing with the macro economic policy signals and directions as a template , as a blackboard and then putting our knowledge including time use, is valuable

3. I argue that such a contribution by us is more valuable to poor women than pointing out gender inequality or even the measuring care work or changing of roles