Unrecognised role of housewives and GDP

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a common indicator for economic development, widely used by all countries in the present century. It is a measure of the value of goods and services produced in a country in a fiscal year. Economic development connotes, among others, welfare of the people, standard of living, health care, education, employment and social development. Some limitations have, however, been recognised by economists in calculation of GDP, especially the measurement of economic growth and welfare, among other things. Economic welfare, however, depends on many factors all of which are not included in GDP calculation.
The GDP doesn't include social gains from the activities of people, especially housewives, who are found to provide relentless domestic services to children, husbands, parents and elderly people. But their invaluable services remain unrecognised and unaccounted for in the GDP.
Economists and state policymakers admit housewives who are engaged in household works immensely help grow the economy and strike welfare of the people. As they are not paid, their work and contribution to the economy are not recognised in the GDP. A housewife teaches her children, makes food for them and the family, keep the house clean, do the laundry work and do shopping free of cost, but her entire works remain outside parameters of the GDP. The same jobs, when done by a paid teacher, by a paid maid and by a paid cook, are recognised in the economic growth in the name of GDP. It's simply unfair as services of a nurse and a nanny are included in the economic parameters, but those of a housewife who renders the same services are not.
In fact, this happens knowingly that the economic and social value of works done by stay-at-home moms or by housewives are extremely high. The nature of work is hard and laborious and the volume is huge. Critics say that GDP even recognises workers who don't work the whole 24 hours and the whole week. They enjoy vacations and holidays on different occasions. That is why a strong ground has been prepared for considering the works of housewives extremely significant economically, socially for inclusion in the GDP.
Many around the world have started campaign and called for payment of salary or allowances to housewives as they work at home. Italian campaigners say wages should be paid to housewives that would give them social dignity and economic independence. Italy, a country with an estimated 5 million housewives, a moribund job market and a lingering patriarchal culture threw its weight behind the eye-catching proposal which it says would boost equality and fight domestic abuse.
The number of housewives around the globe is huge. Various women's groups have been advocating for inclusion of their jobs at home in the GDP for long. They have been arguing that housewives' work is productive and should be counted in the GDP. Local pressure followed the Beijing Conference on Women that produced a United Nations requirement that member-states develop national income accounts that measure housewives' services.
A large number of housewives and stay-at-home moms are there in most of the developed and developing economies. Germany has many housewives. The European Commission has urged Germany to follow the example of Scandinavian countries and dismantle barriers to women entering the workforce to avoid a looming labour shortage. The number of housewives in northern European countries has declined significantly during the last decade. On the other hand, 14 per cent of US women are stay-at-home moms, while 24 per cent are working moms, according to a recent survey report. Currently, in countries of the European Union there are about 45.5 million housewives.
Economists say exclusion of the unpaid jobs of a large number of housewives does not give a true picture of growth as shown in the GDP. Nobel Prize winner Simon Kuznets presented some years back an original set of estimates to the Congress that contained a number of caveats about what was omitted from the calculation of GDP. One of the principal omissions that he cited was the "services of housewives and other members of the family." Although the hours men contribute to household works have risen, while those of women have declined, it is still true that exclusion of household production-of men or women-causes a significant understatement in the level of domestic production. It turns out that Kuznets was correct.
New research by the Bureau of Economic Analysis has found that if the value of household production were included in the GDP, it would add trillions of dollars to the US economy.
Housewives and stay-at-home moms contribute about 70 per cent of the total time spent on household chores even in egalitarian nations such as Sweden and Norway. They do virtually all the household works in poorer countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Some feminists argue persuasively that including housework in the GDP would raise the consciousness of women, especially in the less-developed world where women are badly treated. This would help improve their bargaining position in marriage and the society since many housewives would earn more than their husbands if a woman's household contribution has a monetary value. Yet other feminists do not want explicit calculations of production for housewives, because that would conflict with their agenda of getting women out of the households and into the labour force.
Because of their extremely important roles, happy housewives are no longer rare. One in three young Japanese women wants to get married and be a full-time housewife, a government survey has showed, despite growing calls for increased female participation in the workforce. Including unpaid household works in the measurement of GDP would raise self-respect, social status and economic independence of women who stay at home to care for children, the future generation of a nation, and do other household works without getting any allowance nor any appreciation from the policymakers of the state but adding greatly to welfare for years together. It would also provide a more accurate picture of GDP and growth and might lead to a different interpretation of public policies that affect the allocation of time between household works, productive and market works.
The writer is the CFO of a
private group of companies.  [email protected]