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
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
Time use cuts accross all dimensions
of poverty
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…
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)
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.
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.
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
Gender and time use: key issues
Sequencing: simultaneity, multitasking
 Intensity
 Absence of choice, ‘incompressibility’
 Inelasticity of the gender division of
labor
 Trade offs

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
Gender differentiated time use patterns
Social and cultural norms
 Geographical and socio economic factors
 Household composition and life cycle issues
 Seasonal and farm system considerations
 Etc…

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
growth
Poverty
reduction
1980-90: ‘Efficiency’ paradigm with the
implementation of SAP. Focus on stabilizing
economies and responding to the debt crisis
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’
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
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…
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
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 of economic opportunities
– Respond to changing market conditions and incentives
– Participate in income generating activities.
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’.
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
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)
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)
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).
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.