Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento

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

2. A (recurrent) question • Why is it that TUS have not yet had a strong influence in informing gender-sensitive (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 ender-sensitive policymaking” (ECOSOC/CSW 2010: 44.213)

3. 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.”

4. 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.

5. 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).

6. 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.

7. Looking back in search for reasons Uses and methods of existing time-use 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.

8. 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.

9. 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).

10. 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 “inter-sectionality 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.

11. 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)

12. 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.”

13. 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).

14. 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.