From DEBRA@oln.comlink.apc.orgTue Sep 12 08:15:44 1995 Date: Sat, 09 Sep 1995 08:27:00 +0100 From: Debra Guzman Reply to: beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org To: beijing95-l@netcom.com, beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org Subject: WCW: Ghost-Busting [The following text is in the "ISO-8859-1" character set] [Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set] [Some characters may be displayed incorrectly] ## Original in: /HRNET/WOMEN ## author : hercilia@wcw.apc.org ## date : 03.09.95 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Time to Bust Some Ghosts By Sakiko Fukuda-Parr Women spend long hours working, longer than men in fact. Much of this work is invisible and not given due recognition. This has far-reaching implications on the lives of women. Something needs to be done about this inequity. It is time to "bust some ghosts", to borrow the words of Luisella Goldschmidt-Clermont, a real pioneer in this field. There are reasons why we need to measure and value women s work, but controversy is developing on this issue, mostly for spurious reasons. We need to clarify the facts and put the agenda back on track. Measuring and valuing women s unpaid work does not mean giving an ice tag to this work nor to actually giving a salary or compensation. It also does not mean including this in the national income accounts. It does mean implementing time-use surveys, collecting statistics and developing satellite accounts so that the information becomes transparent. The real reasons for measuring and valuing women s unpaid work have nothing to do with arguments based on fear of what might happen if.... Women s contribution to economic production and social reproduction is enormous, but this is hidden from official statistics, especially national income accounts, which provide a basic picture of how the productive activities of a society are structured. Women and men spend as many hours on work that is not in the system of national accounts (SNA). This amounts to more than half of all economic work. The magnitude of this unpaid work is enormous, and given a monetary valuation it would come to $16 trillion globally, of which women produce $11 trillion. Thus, women bear the largest burden of this unpaid work, carrying on an average 69% of the work. The magnitude and importance of this unpaid work must be valued not only in monetary equivalent terms but in social terms. The unrecognized work of women (and men) may stay a labor of love but must be given full recognition by society. Collecting real data - measuring and valuing - is the first step to giving real recognition to this women s work. Social and institutional arrangements such as divorce settlements, credit systems, inheritance would need to change. Women would no longer be treated as economic non-entities.