Productivity of women in developing countries : measurement issues and recommendations

As a result, policymakers resist the notion of women as economic beings. This report analyzes measurements of women"s economic activities, discusses limits to these measures, and recommends improvements. It is difficult to define women"s household duties -- by their very nature not performed for income -- as productive or leisure activities. Domestic work, except when performed by paid servants, is excluded from most surveys. Many productive and income-generating activities are never valued since only primary job activities are reported in labor surveys. Also, because surveys are usually taken during slow farming times, rural women, who tend to be seasonal agriculturalists, are classified as nonworkers. In addition, religious and cultural biases often influence women to report themselves as economically non-productive. However, reliable data do show that women participate in both home and market production; women tend to work longer hours and have less leisure time than men; and including home production, women"s and children"s contribution to the household is greater than that of men. Among the author"s recommendations to policymakers are: (1) expand the concept of economic activity to include the multiplicity of women"s activities; (2) conduct studies to integrate data on women"s household and marketplace behavior; (3) develop measures which portray shifts in the location of production from the home to the market; (4) design culture-specific measures; (5) identify the relationships between the age, fertility, marital, educational, and health status of female laborers; (6) initiate time use studies to identify inefficient home production activities and useful new technologies; (7) disaggregate and collect data on women"s agricultural activities over a longer time span; (8) initiate complementary studies to identify the socioeconomic constraints to women"s full-time wage employment; and (9) study women"s underlying prejudices, motivations, and goals relating to work. A 47-item bibliography (1934-80) is appended.