Ferrant, G., & Thim, A. (2019). Measuring women’s economic empowerment: Time uses data and gender inequality. OECD Development Policy Papers, No. 16
Ferrant and Thim reviewed policy and programme solutions to promote women’s economic empowerment by recognising, reducing, and redistributing women’s unpaid care work. This paper presents a new analysis of time use data and unpaid care work from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Peru, and South Africa, as well as comparisons with OECD countries. One of the interesting findings from the study is that only women with higher education are likely to see a decrease in routine housework due to increasing income and opportunities to substitute these responsibilities with market services; thus, primary school education does not have a significant impact on the time women spend on routine housework and, in some cases, is associated with an increase. The other key finding is that economic growth is associated with a reduction in unpaid care work for women, in particular a reduction in the physically and time-intensive tasks of unpaid care work (such as collecting water or fuel), leaving women with more time for paid work and study as well as leisure and personal care.
Due to the persistence of restrictive gender norms that assign domestic work and child care to women, higher levels of economic development do not necessarily result in a more equal redistribution of unpaid care work between men and women. The recommendation in the paper states that recognising unpaid care work brings to light the frequently hidden contribution of women to a nation’s prosperity and economic expansion. Regularly gathering time use data is a first step to understanding the amount of time people devote to unpaid care activities and allows for a greater understanding of the disparities between women and men as well as between different groups of women. This will require greater investments in time-use data and a commitment to valuing unpaid care work. The second is to lessen unpaid care work through investments in high-quality infrastructure that can support the most difficult tasks women are responsible for, like collecting water and fuel or cooking, and the third is to redistribute care and domestic tasks by encouraging shared responsibility within the household.
The paper concludes that for both boys and girls, gender disparities in unpaid care work start early and get worse as women approach marriage and childbirth. The suggestion of the paper focuses on how to recognise unpaid care work by measuring and valuing it, decrease time spent on drudgery by providing quality infrastructure, and redistribute unpaid care tasks more equally between men and women by transforming gender stereotypes.