Download Centre for Women*s Development Studies (CWDS) National

Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS)
National Workshop on Women’s Work, Employment and
the Indian Economy
26th, 27th April, 2013, New Delhi
Topic of the Session: Value and Valuation of Women’s
Work in the Economy
On measures of value and their purpose
Devaki Jain
Assisted by Deepshikha Batheja
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Our paper in sum
• Refer to a time use study conducted by ISST in 1976- 77 . Show
how it connects to the topic of this session “Value and
Valuation of Women’s Work in the Economy ”
• Illustrate with examples how invisibility had many implications
for policy and program.
• Discuss the entry of Care-as an interesting exploration of
women s work
• suggest some ideas to NSSO
•
•
Raise some larger questions for those of us who are struggling
with measures and values
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Findings of a Time use study undertaken
in 1977 by ISST
• IF Time spent over a 24 hour day on various activities was the measure
of value … then women would be on top ,
• NSSO questionnaire and the international classification of codes from
which it derives its method should be changed .
• Codes such as 92 – domestic activity and 93 domestic and other activities,
should be discarded as they trapped women, and obscured their
contribution to “gainful activity’ and thereby into being notified as
workers.
• Important for collection and presentation of data to be stratified by class.
 We did this categorizing our sample households in land classes, - and “no
land not even homestead land” as the poorest.
 women weaved their time between household drudgery, we called it the
3 CS – child care, cooking and cleaning , and household based productive
activities , often not counted , which we called HHP , and then outside
work, often not reported so not identified .
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Findings of a Time use study
undertaken in 1977 by ISST(2)
• While in landless households women went out to work even if
uncounted and paid only in goods , daughters were mother
surrogates and could not go to school while sons did .
• So by examining time spent on a set of activities across all ages
5plus, male and female, and then bundling together what appeared
to be contributing to the product , we could get a better picture of
her contribution, and include her in the work force
• In poverty households women were primary bread winners laboring
under very difficult circumstances
• In such a household when an income generating project is brought
in , as for example a buffalo into a land less household in Anand ,
while the household income would increase the woman’s labour
time increased often by 4 hours more to a 14-18 hour day, and this
had impact on her health and often led to early mortality in the
peak age of 30 – 45 due to the burden
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How does all this connect to the topic of
this session? Value, and Valuing Women’s
Work
The answer would vary according to which class of women and which
geographical region and what kind of overall political economy ideas or idealogy
we choose.
They must be counted, formally so they are not invisible workers but visible and
holding the economy.
We were interested in wage/income protection, skill development, and
prevention of occupational hazards
We went into pre final product tasks leading to final product, , showing women’s
invisible unidentified roles in the process of production .
Purpose was to ensure wages, but also notice displacement as well as to reach
credit, skill development, tools, organization to them.
• This invisibility had many implications for policy and program.
 invisibility affects the outreach of development benefits as well as worker and
work protection,
 “Integrating women into a state five year plan”conducted in Karnataka in 1984
• There was no recording of what a woman inside a poverty household was doing!
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Care
• Today there are more interesting explorations of women’s work
 Eg: the whole literature on linking production and reproduction and the
expositions on the care economy.
 new concepts such as giving formal value to care, arguing that it needs to be
factored in structurally, included in domains such as social protection,
pensions etc
• Nathalie Lamaute-Brisson argues that “since with liberalization globalization
and more education , women are entering the formal labour market , they
have less and less time for their traditional care work. It is thus essential to
redistribute total work, both paid and unpaid, but especially the unpaid care
work done within the home, basically by women. Accordingly, a more active
role for the State, the market and society is recommended, together with
male participation in personal care, as necessary conditions for progress
towards a society in which men and women alike are both breadwinners and
caregivers.”
• Need to recognize that “below” the monetised economy, there is an invisible
economy which is “cracking” with ageing population. More women into
outside “house” work demands revaluation of “caring” as “work.”
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NSSO Codes
•
Codes used in identifying the labour force as well as sorting them into different
occupations.
•
As per the classification of activity statuses, persons with activity Code 92 attended
domestic duties only and those with 93, attended domestic duties and were also engaged
in free collection of goods, sewing, tailoring, weaving, etc. for household use.
 So, when it comes to 92 most women will identify with it and of course many other
women will go into 93.
•

•
Latest NSS 66th round (July, 2009 - June, 2010) has published the results of probing
questions addressed to those persons who opt for 92 and 93 as their status .
The results reveal that many of these persons about 21.2 per cent of women of age 5
years and above in rural areas and 9.5 per cent of those in urban areas, responded that
they did engage in activities such as (i) agricultural production such as the
maintenance` of kitchen garden, work in household poultry, dairy, etc., including free
collection of agricultural products for household consumption and (ii) processing of
primary products produced by the households, for households’ consumption.
I had suggested another method by which we “capture” the truth as it were. This was to
“ignore” i.e., not canvass code 92 and 93, but to introduce the idea of asking everyone
the question posed as probing, in a block which is usually block 5 in a NSSO
questionnaire. This asks how the respondent spent time over a week in half days. 7
Some larger questions for those of us who
are struggling with measures and values
• Valuing economic activity, of women, is only the fringe of our
problem or challenge. Valuing economic activity per se is the bigger
problem,
• “The GDP is simply a gross measure of market activity, of money
changing hands. It makes no distinction whatsoever between the
desirable and the undesirable, or costs and gain. On top of that, it
looks only at the portion of reality that economists choose to
acknowledge--the part involved in monetary transactions. The
crucial economic functions performed in the household and
volunteer sectors go entirely unreckoned. As a result the GDP not
only masks the breakdown of the social structure and the natural
habitat upon which the economy--and life itself--ultimately depend;
worse, it actually portrays such breakdown as economic gain.”
(Clifford Cobb, Ted Halstead, and Jonathan Rowe,1995)
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Where is the production, employment and exports
coming from?Should we note value these engines
• According to the Tenth Plan, GDP from handicrafts contributed about
25 per cent of the GDP of unregistered manufacturing sector in the
country, about 7.5 per cent of the total manufacturing sector.
• craft sector accounts for 15-20 per cent of the country’s
manufacturing workforce
• Its exports have increased by 24.58% during the last year (2011-12) of
the 11th Plan amounting to approximately 161 billion.
• Handloom sector is one of the largest in terms of providing
employment to over 4.3 million persons engaged in weaving and
allied activities, out of which about 78% are women.
• This sector contributes nearly 19 per cent of the total cloth produced
in the country and also adds substantially to exports earnings.
• Another important employment source is Khadi and Village
industries, with 12 million persons working in this sector.
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Where is the production, employment and
exports coming from?(2)
• Data shows that out of the total of 23 millions of homebased workers, 44 percent are women.
• Domestic workers total around 5.2 million, and currently
dominate the contribution of the services sector to the
GDP. T
• Also provide foreign exchange through remittances as they
often migrate to serve in gulf and other countries.
• Nurses are another large women led economic
confederation.
• Street vendors and waste pickers are coming up with
national associations of themselves
• Number of street traders exceeds 3.1 million in India.
Unofficial estimates suggest there are closer to 10 million.
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Important Question
• There are advocates for salaried work in proper industrial and other
enterprises and indeed as the latest figures from China are revealing.
• “Globalization and gender wage inequality in China” by Zhihong Chen
and Ying Ge published in World Development, the analysis is that
globalization and liberalization has increased the job offers to women ,
and hence big rise in salaried work. It also says why women and why these
MNC or the financiers are taking on women- cheaper less organised more
desperate for bringing in income , we know all these “virtues “
• The paper suggests that” Overall, our results highlight the importance of
globalization in encouraging female employment and reducing gender
discrimination.“!!!!
• How do we respond to this as a positive for women? The collapse of the
building holding garment factories in Bangla Desh should alert us ?
• We who are not slaves to the neo liberal paradigm or to GDP growth
rates ? THIS IS WHERE WE NEED to go with our thinking on values
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New thinking: one small example
• “Harvesting Feminist Knowledge for Public Policy” which I coedited with Diane Elson * feminists of the south in partnership
with scholars from the north analysed the sources as well as
offered ideas for reconstructing the very basis of economic
reasoning as well as measures of valuation of work and
progress.
• We argue collectively that it is time to ‘harvest’ feminist
knowledge to plot alternate paths for human progress,
divorced from pre-existing economic and development
frameworks
• They offer new ways of measuring or giving values to the
economic spaces…and argue that political democracy needs to
be underpinned by economic democracy
 Suggest that transformation that ‘bubbles up’ rather than‘
trickles down’ is the only way to power production, lead
growth, and move the economy in a broad-based, socially
equitable direction
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[email protected]
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