Recognise women's work in GDP

Speakers at a national dialogue on Monday called upon the government to recognise the unaccounted and unpaid work of women in the GDP through satellite accounts for their empowerment that will ultimately help stop violence against them.
They also observed that gender budgeting should not be only resource allocation but in line with women empowerment and the Women Development Policy.
Public service delivery, infrastructure, social protection and other benefits should be women-friendly to ensure increased female participation in the labour market, they viewed.
A gender budget analysis has shown that about 43 per cent of the total social welfare fund allocated in the national budget is received by rich people in the form of pension and other benefit schemes while the present faulty social protection design hardly helps the poor graduate from extreme poverty.
It also showed that in some cases, the allocation has been reduced by over 60 per cent in the revised budget from what was shown in the proposed budget.
The dialogue titled 'Gender Responsive Budgeting and Formal Recognition of Women's Unaccounted Work' was held at Spectra Convention Centre in the city.
Manusher Jonno Foundation (MJF) organised the event where Planning Minister Muhammad Abdul Mannan was present as the chief guest.
Gender budget analyses on six ministries done by Manusher Jonno Foundation were presented by Sayema Haque and Shermind Nilormi, associate professors of the Economics departments of Dhaka University and Jahangirnagar University respectively.
The ministries are-women and children affairs ministry, labour ministry, land ministry, sports ministry, expatriates welfare and social welfare ministry.
Fahmida Khatun, executive director, of Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), presented the paper on 'Estimating Unpaid Work in Bangladesh's GDP: A Conceptual Framework for Household Satellite Accounts Approach'.
Shaheen Anam, executive director of MJF, said women's works are always considered as reproductive.
Even the productive works done at household level like agriculture are not recognised easily.
It has been found that if unpaid works of women are monetised, it will be three times higher than the paid works.
Globally, the amount is US$ 10 trillion which is 43 times higher than the annual turnover of Apple company, she added.
"We should monetise it and include it in the GDP. The dignity of women has to be enhanced both at home and outside by recognising their works. Because, violence against women will end once the status of women is improved and they become empowered," she said.
In her presentation, Fahmida Khatun said while Bangladesh was able to close over 72 per cent of its overall gender gap, an underlying disquieting trend was the widening of gender gap in terms of labour force participation which is only 36 per cent now.
The value of women's unpaid works was equivalent to about 77 per cent of Bangladesh's GDP in 2013-14 based on the replacement cost method and 87 per cent based on the willingness to accept method.
Conventional GDP estimations captured 98 per cent of men's production and only 47 per cent of women's production, she added.
In the context of absence of data, Fahmida Khatun suggested that the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) leverage National Strategy for the Development of the Statistics (NSDS) to extend the existing surveys to capture the details of women's unpaid works.
Sayema Haque said gender budget is needed so that the budget helps minimise the gender gap.
At present, 43 ministries prepare a gender budget. In the 2019 budget, 29.65 per cent of the total budget was allocated.
She noted that women are not benefited from the operating budget as the participation of women in the top administrative positions is small.
The projects and programmes undertaken by the government need to be monitored and evaluated carefully to ensure that they go in favour of women, she added.
Shermind Nilormi said the present gender budget does not focus on the Women Development Policy.
In the budget analysis on the youth and sports ministry, it was found that 70 per cent allocation for a progarmme shrank to 31 per cent in the revised budget.
Abdul Mannan said everything has a value in the economics. To include the unpaid works of women in the GDP is a portion of a bigger problem which is empowerment of women.
"We cannot allocate resource properly. The budget should be fair so that everyone is benefited from it. The problem can be solved by addressing the pockets of injustice," he added.
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