Kampala, Uganda 4 - 7 December 2012
Ionica Berevoescu
Consultant
United Nations Statistics Division

Three strategies for improving gender statistics in work:
• Improve the coverage of gender issues related to work, by extending data collection from labour force participation, employment, and unemployment, to employment conditions, family-work balance, and child work
• Improve the understanding of gender differences in work by producing more disaggregated gender statistics
• Improve the quality of gender statistics and statistics in general by taking into account gender-related conceptual and measurement issues:
– Definitions and measurement methods should cover and adequately describe all workers and work situations in sufficient detail to allow relevant gender comparisons to be made (ILO, International guidelines for mainstreaming gender in labour statistics , 2003)

I.
Labour force participation
II.
Employment conditions
III. Reconciliation of work and family life
IV. Child work

Statistics on labour force participation, employment and unemployment provide a basic picture of the labour force.
From a gender perspective, important to focus on comparative levels and trends for women and men, from a life cycle perspective.
Main sources of data: labour force surveys (or labour force modules), population censuses, establishment censuses or surveys, administrative records.

Gender-related conceptual and measurement issues
(labour force participation, employment and unemployment)
1.
Participation of women in work activities and their contribution to the economy tends to be underestimated because not all forms of work are covered by conventional labour force statistics.
• Conventional labour statistics currently limited to activities which contribute to the production of goods and services as defined by the
SNA (system of national accounts)
• Own account production of services, mostly carried out by women, are not covered. Examples of such activities: cleaning; small repairs; preparing and serving meals; caring for and instructing children; caring for other persons in the household; some types of volunteer services.
• The necessary additional statistics should be produced based on time use surveys or modules.

Gender-related conceptual and measurement issues
(labour force participation, employment and unemployment)
2.
Women’s participation in labour force and employment may be more often underreported.
•
•
Due to incomplete measurement of all forms of work implied by the definition of the labour force and SNA production boundary.
•
Production of goods by households for own final use (included in the SNA general production boundary) difficult to separate from own account production of services (non-SNA).
• Gender-based stereotypes of women regarded as a housewife in charge of domestic work may lead to underreporting
• To prevent underreporting, include in the questionnaire follow-up questions and list of activities likely to be underreported, and emphasize the issue during training of interviewers
•
Coverage of women’s activities may depend on reference period, because women more often found than men in seasonal and intermittent economic activities
Repeat the measure of labour force and employment several times a year; or base your data collection on a longer reference period (12 months).
• Underreporting of women in employment when using establishment-based surveys (tend to focus on regular employees; tend to exclude from the sample small enterprises where women may be more often found).

Gender-related conceptual and measurement issues
(labour force participation, employment and unemployment)
3.
Women’s unemployment may be more likely to be underreported. (3 criteria in identifying unemployed: “without work”,
“currently available for work”, “seeking work”)
•
Women may be perceived or they may define themselves as not seeking work, because formal channels are used less in their search;
• Women are more likely to be “discouraged workers” or “seasonal workers” waiting for the busy season.
• These categories would be considered “unemployed” only if a relaxed criterion of “seeking work” is used in the definition of unemployment.
• When using administrative sources to collect data on unemployment, unemployed population is reduced to those receiving benefits or registered in the office for job seeking, therefore women may be more likely to be excluded.

- Employment conditions are usually revealed by statistics on: occupation, status in employment, industry, informal employment, number of hours worked and underemployment, and wages or earnings.
- Gender issues: women and men do different types of work, have different
opportunities for career advancement, and different earnings.
- From a gender perspective, important to produce data that would help understand issues such as gender segregation in occupation, or gender pay gap.
One strategy: production of data that are further disaggregated by age, educational attainment, years of seniority in employment, and family characteristics.
- Main sources of data: labour force survey, population censuses, surveys of informal sector and informal employment (or modules on informal employment), establishment censuses or surveys, and administrative records.

Gender-related conceptual and measurement issues
(employment conditions)
1.
Occupation and status in employment are often not recorded with enough detail.
• Differences in forms of work carried out by women and men and specific employment conditions can be assessed properly only when occupation and status in employment are measured in detail.
•
Data on occupation should be obtained not only for major groups, but also for sub-major groups, minor and unit groups. Those details should not be compacted into major occupations groups by coding or processing data.
•
Data on status in employment should be collected and disseminated separately for employees and each of the four categories of selfemployment: employers, own account workers, contributing family workers and members of producers’ cooperatives, as these categories have different economic risks.
• Other sub-categories of status in employment, recommended by ILO, may be relevant for some countries and from a gender perspective:
• “owner-managers” and “employees with stable contract”
• “casual workers”, “seasonal workers”, “subsistence workers”

Gender-related conceptual and measurement issues
(employment conditions)
2.
Misclassification in status in employment categories.
• Example: women who work in association and on an equal footing with their husbands in a family enterprise, should be classified in the same status in employment category as their husbands, either “own account workers” or “employers”.
However, in practice, the woman may be classified as
“contributing family worker”.
• Caution when deciding the status in employment for a person with two or more jobs during the reference period which may be more relevant for one of the sexes. Status in employment can refer to only one job, either where she/he worked the longest hours, or provided the highest income from employment.

Gender issue: Women and men have different family constraints in participating on the labour market, as women are the primary caretakers of their families
Data
-Time use by type of activity, sex, age and employment status
-Total employment and employment in flexible working arrangements.
-Availability of formal childcare services and enrolment in pre-primary education
Contextual information
- Length and related benefits of maternity and paternity leave

Also important from a gender perspective:
- Dissemination of data on labour force participation and employment crosstabulated by various indicators of family constraints, such as presence of children, older persons, or disabled.
- Presentation of some of the data obtained at couple/family level (see example below)

• Time use surveys
• Provide data on time use allocation along with contextual information necessary to distinguish between paid and various types of unpaid activities, as well as background information on individual and household characteristics
• May be based on diaries or stylized analogue questionnaire focused on a given list of activities.
• Modules on time use
• May be attached to labour force surveys, living conditions surveys or other multi-purpose survey
• Most often in the form of stylized analogue questionnaire
• Labour force surveys or multi-purpose surveys
• May contain a module focused on work-family balance, collecting, at the same time, information related to the type of job and information related to that person’s family and household.
• In terms of job, in addition to employment and status in employment, information collected may refer to hours worked, schedule of work and place of work.
• Individual and household-related characteristics of interest are: marital status, employment status of the partner, presence in the household of pre-school children or other dependants in need for care, availability of child services

Gender-related conceptual and measurement issues
(reconciliation of work and family life)
• Time use statistics should allow for measurement of unpaid housework for women and men, and distinguish between:
– Unpaid activities that are beyond the operational production boundary of the SNA and not covered by conventional labour force statistics
– Unremunerated work activities within the operational production boundary of the SNA and normally covered by conventional labour force statistics
– Paid work activities within the boundary of SNA
• The separation between these activities is possible only when additional contextual information is collected in the time use survey
(whether the activities were paid/unpaid; and for whom the work was performed).
• Specific types of activities, often related to unpaid work and performed by women, can be identified only when simultaneous activities are all recorded.

• Child work covers all forms of work, paid and unpaid, and include both child labour (defined as worst forms of work, work below minimum age, and work in hazardous conditions) and housework activities
• Data: children in employment; children working in worst forms of work; children engaged in housework; number of hours worked.
• Important from a gender perspective: understanding some causes and consequences of child work
– disaggregate gender statistics in child work by poverty status or wealth categories;
– disaggregate school attendance by labour force participation status or number of hours worked.
• Sources of data: child labour surveys; DHS and MICS; labour force surveys; some establishment surveys

:
• For the most recent data collection exercise conducted in your country (e.g., specific census or survey) that collected
& had a
:
• What work-related topics were covered in the questionnaire?
• What methods for reducing underreporting of work activities were used?
• What topics were covered from a gender perspective in the report and how? Give 2-3 examples.