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The most unrecognized contribution

Shahida Pervin
Atypical day consists of 24 hours within which people have to complete their work. This 24 hour is distributed among different tasks in conformance with the priority and responsibility of a person. Priority of work may be set by the concerned person or may be imposed by others. Issues regarding priority and responsibility of doing work create discrimination between men and women in Bangladesh. A few infrequent job (e.g., child birth and feeding) are determined by nature for women which takes a short period of their whole life. A significant part of their job is determined by social and cultural norms.
The conventional definition of work also includes leisure as work. The System of National Accounts (SNA) specifies work as SNA, non-SNA and personal work. SNA work increases wellbeing, comes under market transaction and is included in the national accounts. Non-SNA work increases wellbeing, but are not transacted in the market and thus does not enter into the national accounts. Personal work does not increase wellbeing directly, and hence does not come to the market for transaction and is omitted in the national accounts. SNA and non-SNA work deserve concentration because of their contribution to the wellbeing. Both types of work increase wellbeing but the former brings monetary compensation for the contributor directly or indirectly and the later does not.
Non-SNA work is normally household work and unpaid in nature. From economic perspective, SNA work is termed as work and non-SNA is not. When someone is assigned for SNA and someone for non-SNA, necessarily there will be a discrimination. Every household has types of work which are done by the members of that household or by hired people. Essentially some of the work has to be done by the household members.
Traditionally, women in Bangladesh carry out the household work which are mainly non-SNA and unpaid. Time Use Survey 2012 of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics exposed that "employed women" spend 5.2 hours in paid work while men spend 6.9 hours. "Employed men" spend 1.7 hours more in paid work compared to their female counterparts. Women in this category do household work of 3.6 hours while men do for 1.4 hours. “Employed men” do 2.2 hours less of household work than "employed women". Due to household work women cannot spend much time in paid work. Even if the same number of hours is spent by women in paid work as men do, women have to do more household work. Within "not employed group", women do household work for 6.2 hours while men do for 1.2 hours. Everywhere women have less leisure time- for "employed group" it is 0.3 hours less than men and for "not employed group" it is 0.9 hours less. Broadly, "employed women" spend 1.7 hours less in SNA work, 2.1 hours more in non-SNA work and 0.5 hours less in personal work than men. The "not employed women" spend 4 hours more in non-SNA work and 5 hours less in personal work.
Bangladeshi Women are culturally assigned for the non-SNA and unpaid work. Consequently women are underestimated within the household. Since a household is the smaller unit of society, ultimately women are underestimated in every sphere of life. Briefly, underestimation of women is due to two reasons: first, assignment of women in non-SNA work and second, non-existence of market and accounts of non-SNA work.
To resolve the problem of underestimation of women's contribution one of the two steps should be undertaken. First, women should not be assigned for non-SNA work particularly. Alternatively, there should be an account of non-SNA work. Except for the naturally assigned work, the household work can be done by all the members, not by the women separately. That is, there should not be any gender biased responsibility for doing work. If this is established in the mindset of society, valuation of unpaid work is not necessary. This is concomitant with the SNA measurement process. Otherwise SNA system should be revised. If one of these two steps is adopted, the issue of women's underestimation can be solved. This can truly be resolved if huge campaigns are carried out across the country against gender based classification of work or by pursuing the SNA authorities to accept a valuation method of non-SNA work.
The writer Is Research Associate, Centre for Policy Dialogue