Transcript Diapositiva 1

Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento
Time-use data collection and gender-sensitive
policies, fifteen years after Beijing
Valeria Esquivel
Encuestas de Uso del Tempo
Aspectos metodológicos y experiencias internacionales
Río de Janeiro, 10 de septiembre de 2010
A (recurrent) question
• Why is it that TUS have not yet had a
strong influence in informing gendersensitive (and other) policies?
“Lack of timely, reliable and comparable
sex-disaggregated data on women’s paid
and unpaid contribution to the economy is
a major obstacle to evidence-based endersensitive policymaking” (ECOSOC/CSW
2010: 44.213)
Looking back in search for reasons
Overemphasis in a macro-accounting
analytical level
Among BPfA (H.3.f) strategic objectives aiming at
developing “a more comprehensive knowledge of all
forms of work and employment” is:
“(iii) Developing methods (…) for assessing the value,
in quantitative terms, of unremunerated work that is
outside national accounts, such as caring for
dependants and preparing food, for possible reflection in
satellite or other official accounts that may be
produced separately from but are consistent with
core national accounts, with a view to recognizing the
economic contribution of women and making visible
the unequal distribution of remunerated and
unremunerated work between women and men.”
Looking back in search for reasons
Overemphasis in a macro-accounting
analytical level
• Typically, the BPfA background documents argued that
measuring and valuing women’s contributions to the
economy and including it in GDP was a necessary (and
even sufficient) condition for gender equality.
“[U]nless women’s contributions to the economy were
recognized and accepted, we would continue to be
second-class citizens with all its negative implications”
(Collas-Monsod 2010: 245, referring to one of the
conclusions of the Casablanca dream).”
• Absence of concrete (short term) connections from
household sector satellite accounts’ calculations to
short-term macroeconomic policies in the BPfA.
Looking back in search for reasons
Overemphasis in a macro-accounting
analytical level
“I am now categorically of the belief that imputation or
estimation is not a necessary step for the most effective
use of the time-use data. Imputation has the effect of
removing the value of the raw data and converting it to
an abstract in which the most important details for
strategic policy interventions have been lost. Abstracted
imputations for this unpaid work do not help us get any
closer to determining what the policy response should
be. It may help convince a Minister that there should be
a response, because the cost benefit analysis shows,
even with trade offs, that an intervention is ‘worth it’. But
it is the cross tabulations of the time-use data,
supplemented with other material, which provide the
comprehensive foundation for a strategic policy
response, and for the monitoring and evaluation of any
implementation.” (Waring, 2009: 4).
Looking back in search for reasons
The political agenda behind
measuring and valuing unpaid work
• The BPfA clearly establishes that measuring and
valuing unpaid work is related to visibility and
recognition objectives. It is framed in the “cultural”
(or “symbolic” realm), and therefore deprived of
explicit distributive justice considerations.
• The political agenda that supported the BPfA
request had a clear connection between
recognition of the economic contribution of women,
its valuation in monetary terms and the payment of
wages for housework.
Looking back in search for reasons
Uses and methods of existing timeuse data
• The aggregate approach to time-use analysis (which
only requires tallying of times spent by women and
men in unpaid work) might have conspired against
the development of alternative—and potentially
powerful—uses of detailed time-use data to inform
gender-sensitive policies.
• Producing information valuable for informing
gender-sensitive policies is a different thing; and in
order to produce detailed information, TUS
methodologies need to be shaped accordingly.
The Way Forward
From the “contributions to production” to
the contributions to well-being”
• A conceptual change from labor to care (although
housework should not get out of the picture, and can be
considered indirect care).
• A more complex understanding of socially and
ideologically constructed ‘needs’ and ‘care
responsibilities’ is needed to overcome the emphasis on
“dependent care”. This leads to the analysis of whether
these needs are met, who meets them (or fails to meet
them), and how being able to meet these needs (or
being sanctioned because these needs are not met)
intersect with other dimensions of inequality like class,
sexuality, household composition, or stage in the
lifecycle.
The Way Forward
From the “contributions to production” to
the contributions to well-being”
• The perspective of “costs” of care should be coupled
with the perspective of “well-being”- the relevant
questions being whose costs and whose well-being.
“[T] he accounting project must be viewed, on the one
hand, not as an end in itself but as a means to
understand who contributes to human welfare and
human development—and to what extent. (…) On the
other hand, these estimates can provide information for
the design of policies to distribute the pains and
pleasures of work in a more egalitarian fashion. (…) The
challenge [of measuring unpaid work] leads us to
question the ways in which we measure well-being and
to understand who contributes to it in our communities
and in society as a whole” (Benería, 2003: 160).
The Way Forward
Broaden the political agendas that
time-use results could inform
• Insisting on a people-centered, egalitarian, and
inclusive growth model—it is possible to move
beyond the BPfA by engaging with broader
political agendas than those that initially
supported visibility and valuation of unpaid
work. These agendas have already articulated
claims for the reduction and redistribution of
unpaid work; and have abandoned a univocal
approach to gender-equality to recognize the “intersectionality of disadvantage that women encounter”
across “class, race, ethnicity, age and regional
diversity” (EGM 2009: 56, point h). They are the
care agenda and the development agenda.
The Way Forward
Broaden the political agendas that time-use
results could inform
• For the care agenda, unpaid (care) work visibility achieved
through time-use surveys is finally untied from an almost
exclusive valuation purpose to become both an advocacy
tool—giving voice to women’s groups to articulate their
claims; and a monitoring device, although it should be
noted that time-use surveys should be regularly repeated
to become so.
“In order to increase policy support for care-givers and
carereceivers, care must emerge from the private realm
and become a public issue. An important step in this
direction is to make care work more visible through
statistics as well as in public debates. Timely and regular
indicators, such as those provided by time use surveys,
are needed in order to monitor policy effectiveness in
reducing and equalizing care burdens” (UNRISD, 2010: 5)
The Way Forward
Broaden the political agendas that time-use
results could inform
• The BPfA was imbued in a broad and progressive
development agenda that comprised
macroeconomic, food security, education, health
and employment policies (EGM 209).
“Devise suitable statistical means to recognize and
make visible the full extent of the work of women
and all their contributions to the national economy,
including their contribution in the unremunerated
and domestic sectors, and examine the
relationship of women’s unremunerated work to
the incidence of and their vulnerability to
poverty.”
The Way Forward
Broaden the political agendas that time-use results
could inform
• This development agenda is not restricted to providing infrastructure
(water; sanitation; transportation).
“Urges States to develop and implement gender-sensitive policies and
programmes aimed at promoting women’s economic empowerment,
including through enhancing their access to full and productive
employment and decent work for all and to equal pay for equal work or
work of equal value, and at supporting women’s technical, managerial
and entrepreneurial capacities and initiatives, with the aim of ensuring
sustainable and adequate income generation and empowering women
as equal partners with men in these fields (…)
Calls on Member States to strengthen the incentive role of the public
sector as employer in order to develop an environment that effectively
affirms and empowers women (…) (CSW 2010a: 4 - 5, points 3, 15).
A renewed advocacy for time-use
data collection
• A renewed advocacy for time-use data collection
should therefore recast time-use data collection
within broad agendas that support the reduction
and redistribution of unpaid work within a
framework that recognizes both their contributions
to well-being and the costs for those who provide
it—i.e., within an economic justice framework.
• Time-use data collection should not remain linked
exclusively to SNA objectives, but become part of
the social/demographic statistics.