Accounting for the unaccounted

We recently observed the International Day of the Girl Child. The day signifies the aspiration to have a society bereft of the challenges girls face and to promote girls’ empowerment and the fulfillment of their human rights. So here we are, endeavouring to engage in a meaningful conversation centred on the celebrated gender.

Apart from a few extremely affluent families, we all have seen our mothers do home chores across our society, notwithstanding geographical-sociological differences. The responsibility of humdrum household tasks like cleaning, cooking, laundry, ironing, care responsibilities, etc, is abdicated by some supposed holy grail to a single gender, and what’s more, it is considered ‘non-economic’ work. According to UN Women, globally, women – particularly those from low-income, migrant, and racialised groups – perform more than three-quarters of unpaid care and domestic work.

In a world overshadowed by the spectre of economics (no intrinsic value except an economic one), this means that everyday tasks are deemed dispensable and pedestrian. This is despite the fact that these household activities hamper women from other pursuits of economic, social, and educational nature, thus putting the already disadvantaged ‘gender’ in a more worrying position.

It is important at the outset to underscore that household chores, including caring for infants, are not the problem at all; it is the outright disproportionate distribution among genders that lies at the heart of the problem.

There are two apparent factors causing this: the pathological structure of patriarchy – the conception of women being less-developed, less-deserved, and less-esteemed vis-à-vis men. And so, it is the men, being ‘superior’ and ‘stronger’, who should be the ones earning and thus, by hegemonising the other gender by making them financially depending, be the master of the house.

From a young age, women are often socialised into accepting household chores as part of their role, while men are not always expected to do the same. There is a long-standing belief that women are the primary caregivers and homemakers, while men are the breadwinners. This results in women shouldering most domestic responsibilities, regardless of their participation in the workforce.

Apart from the deep-rooted patriarchal archetypes, women in Pakistan face numerous barriers that prevent them from fully participating in the market, including financial losses, the lack of efficient markets between buyers and sellers, transportation challenges for women spearheading small-scale businesses, inaccessibility to financial institutions, digital divide, and lack of access to legal forums etc.

These factors along with others contribute to societal pressure on women to limit their participation in economic activities and focus on domestic work within the home. This is further compounded by the low wages, making it financially more viable for families to keep women at home rather than letting them participate in paid labour outside. As a result, a significant number of Pakistani women (out of 4.4 million home-based workers, 3.6 million are women) become home-based workers.

According to PIDE, on average, a woman spends around three hours daily on non-market work (non-remunerated work) that is economically unaccounted. Women allocate their longest time in the kitchen cooking food, followed by cleaning the home, washing, and child/elder care. But unfortunately, in the conventional economic realm, these non-market work hours spent on activities vital for societal well-being are not considered at all. Further, it is estimated that if both market and non-market time are taken into account, the lacuna between the genders is reduced significantly: for men, 4.7 hours, and for women, 3.5 hours. It is not limited to time only; in the holistic picture, the analysis reveals that women surpass men when quantifying both market and non-market work together.

In a country like Pakistan, this strictly household work negatively affects women’s participation in other dimensions as well, like education (53 per cent of the over 25 million out-of-school children), labour participation rate (24 per cent as compared to around 80 per cent of men), and repression of women’s leadership, power, and voice (5.71 per cent of legislators, senior officials, and managers). The cardinal question then is: why should a girl be educated, groomed and thrived if the only role she has to do is to stick with the home chores?

In other words, this disproportionate allocation and the lack of acknowledgement as valuable endeavours transcend from the household to the edifice of the whole society and create structural barriers that prevent women from fully utilizing their potential in the economy.

The way forward includes a need to question the very existence of the skewed division of household work among genders. Who decides who will do what? Isn’t it the perennial patriarchal bearings still lingering within society that drives these eccentricities among genders? Undoing it first would be the starting point.

To fully realise the potential of the whole demographic bonanza, developing and implementing policies aimed at promoting shared responsibilities within households and nudging men to take a more active role in traditionally perceived ‘female tasks’ can alleviate the burden on women and contribute to a more equitable distribution of household responsibilities.

However, household work is just one dimension of the problem. In Pakistan, women face significant challenges when entering the workforce. The lack of childcare services for working mothers, inflexible work arrangements, inadequate transportation, and an unsafe work environment are all barriers rooted in societal norms that restrict women’s participation in the economy. Addressing these issues is critical, and the government must implement policies that create an environment conducive to women’s active involvement in the workforce and ultimately leap towards the achievement of SDG5.

This then can contribute in the sustainable long-term economic growth of the country. As research suggests, there is a positive correlation between gender equality and GDP per capita, driven by higher household incomes, better infrastructure, technological advancement, and a larger share of services in the economy.

A paradigm shift is also much needed in the calibration of macroeconomic indicators and economic discourse in general. These realities, which may squarely affect the policies being made on already uni-gender-dominated datasets, are circumvented and as a result fail to account for women’s contributions. A more inclusive approach to data collection and policy-making is essential.

And to demystify archaic thought processes and promote more equitable ideas, educational and awareness campaigns should be ardently pursued. This can challenge societal norms and gender roles and foster a dialogue that shifts away from traditional expectations, promoting the idea that both men and women can contribute to economic activities and caregiving responsibilities.

The woman question is not merely a core human rights issue now. For a socio-economically distressed and politically divided country like Pakistan, it is an existential question. By restructuring our societies with a view to closing gaps and eliminating barriers for women and girls, we design societies that are more equal, sustainable, and peaceful.

The writer is a Peshawar-based researcher who works in the financial sector.