Women and work

In the past decades, substantial progress has been achieved with respect to research on women's work: evaluating the work in monetary terms; explaining the factors behind gender division of labor; and its impact on the status of women in the family. Credible documentation of women's participation in economic activities is problematic particularly for women belonging to farm households. Invisibility of women's productive work is a problem, particularly in developing countries because women usually work within the household, and productive work is often overlapped with the so-called non-productive work. Definition of productive work also causes problems. Marxists have distinguished between productive and reproductive labor, economists have conceptualized the difference between market production and subsistence production and between wage and non-wage labor, and sociologists have drawn a line between work at home and outside home. When it comes to evaluation of work, neoclassical economic tradition emphasizes the activities undertaken to meet the demand of the markets. On that count, women's work outside the labor market has often been overlooked and excluded from economic analyses. In the 1960s, a series of articles known as 'New Household Economics" made a major contribution to women's research focusing on the valuation of homework irrespective of whether it is spent on productive or reproductive work in terms of market wages, and on the role of comparative advantages and specialization in the allocation of labor. However, neoclassical household economics is criticized for ignoring the influence of cultural and social institutions in determining tastes and preferences and gender division of labor, and for the assumption of unitary household with joint utility function based on altruism among household members . The institutionalism approach and different bargaining models provide a more plausible explanation of gender inequality in the household. On the empirical side, the debate on the wages of domestic labor in 1960s and the United Nations conferences during the Decade for Women (1976-1985) popularized the concept of social reproduction. The above discourse and debate contributed to the recognition of women's work in the productive and social sectors. In recent years, empirical research have tried to document the extent of women's involvement in specific tasks, and their contribution to national income, but the controversy regarding the complexity of women's work and the interconnectedness between different types of functions remains. Some important research questions are: what are the factors that determine the allocation of women's time among different types of activities? How are they related to the status of women within the household? The role of women's work for gender, development and poverty reduction continues to be an important area of investigation in Bangladesh. It is recognized that women work more hours than men, particularly in low-income households, more in agricultural than in non-agricultural economic activities, and more as unpaid family laborers than as managers. Even if they do most of the work, men mostly control their decision making power and ownership of household resources. Institutional services for development target only men. Even when women are targeted such as in micro-credit program, women are often used as a front and men keep control over managing the resources. Thus, it is acknowledged that women are a disadvantaged group when acquiring knowledge on farm and non-farm production systems and technologies from the service sectors. They are disadvantaged because of traditional culture and social norms that confer power and privilege to men. However, some recent studies have observed that women from poor households change their traditional norms and responsibilities at home and involve in post-harvest agricultural activities outside the home due to extreme poverty and food deficiency. A general critique of the studies is that they are based on a field work in one or a few selected villages, and hence it is difficult to get a picture for the country as a whole or for different regions. With a few exceptions, few studies have analyzed how the dynamics in rural Bangladesh have affected women. We define economic activities as those that generate income for the households or saves household expenditure for the acquisition of the goods and services from the market. This includes employment in the agricultural and non-agricultural labor market, but also unpaid work for the household in crop cultivation, homestead gardening, livestock and poultry raising, fishing, cottage industry, transport operation, construction, business, and personal services. There are many other activities done mostly by women that are quasi-economic in nature which are not valued in national income accounting. Examples are: food-processing and preparation of meals for the family members; care of the child, old and sick members of the household; and tutoring of children. If the household had hired workers for doing these jobs, it would involve some expenditure. We term these as domestic activities. According to the estimates from the response on primary occupation used in a sample survey, four fifths of the male population and only 6 per cent of the female population above 14 years of age were engaged in an economic activity in year 2000. The numbers were 93 and 8.8 per cent respectively for men and women in 1988. There has been a decline in economic activity for both men and women. It should be noted that direct questions to respondents on employment seriously underestimate women's participation in economic activities as most women devote their maximum time to domestic labor in home-based activities that identifies them as homemaker. Also, marginal involvement of both men and women in many economic activities is usually missed by surveys that ask questions regarding their primary and secondary occupation. In order to get a full accounting of labor allocation, one should adopt a time budget approach. The respondents were asked to report the time allocation to different activities (including rest, recreation and personal care) for 12 hours from six in the morning to six in the evening for workers above 14 years of age for four days proceeding the year of the survey. The total working time for 2000 was estimated at 7.81 for women and 8.07 for men indicating men working harder than women. The situation was opposite in 1988 when women worked for 9.00 hours a day compared to 8.55 hours for men . That women spend longer hours than men was also reported by the first pioneering study on time budget based on a sample survey in seven unions in the 1970s. Only 23 per cent of the total labor for women was on account of economic activities, compared to 83 percent for men. In 2000, women spent on average, 1.79 hours per day (equivalent to 82 standard eight- hour days in a year) on economic activities compared to 6.73 hrs (307 days per year) for men. While total work time has declined for both men and women, women experienced a larger decline. The reallocation of labor among different activities also differs a great deal. Men have reduced their labor supply to agriculture by 1.79 hours a day, which is partly compensated by an increase of 0.95 hours to non-agriculture and domestic work. The reverse is the case for women who have withdrawn some labor from non-agriculture, but increased the labor supply to agricultural activities. Most of the reduction in women's work effort is on account of domestic labor which has declined by 1.12 hours a day. Substantial reduction in labor supply by women may partly be due to the replacement of the traditional back-breaking homestead-based processing technologies by relatively advanced commercial technologies. For example, rice milling by dhenki and pit looms is taken over by rice huller and the semi-automated looms. An improvement in the quality of housing that requires less time for maintaining cleanliness and demographic changes reflected in smaller family size may have also contributed to reduced domestic labor. Another explanation may be that the increase in male domestic work reduces the burden for women. This is an interesting finding that needs further research. Abdul Bayes is a Professor of Economics at Jahamgirmagar University. E-mail : abdulbayes@yahoo.com