Unpaid Work and Policy-Makingmeasuring and imputing the value of unpaid work, the arguments pro and contra the incorporation of unpaid work in the System of National Accounts are discussed

ST/ESA/1999/DP.4DESA Discussion Paper No. 4

Unpaid Work andPolicy-MakingTowards a BroaderPerspective of Workand Employment

Joke Swiebel

February 1999

United Nations

DESA Discussion Paper Series

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Department of Economic and Social Affairs.”

Joke Swiebel

The author has worked in the area of gender equality policy-making since

the 1970s. She has represented the Netherlands at the European Union,

the Council of Europe and the United Nations, working in various

committees and commissions. Comments should be addressed to the

author at Taandwarsstraat 7, NL-1013 BV, Amsterdam with a copy to John

Langmore, or by e-mail to [email protected].

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John LangmoreDirectorDivision for Social Policy and DevelopmentRoom DC2-1370United NationsNew York, NY 10017Phone: (212) 963-5855/Fax: (212) 963-3062Email: [email protected]

Additional copies of the paper are available from John Langmore.

United Nations

Department of Economic and Social Affairs

Abstract

While the discussion on the issue of unpaid work which took place at the World Summit for SocialDevelopment and at the World Conference on Women focussed mainly on the controversy of includingunpaid work in national accounts and other statistics, this paper considers the issue of unpaid workfrom a policy perspective. It also attempts to clarify the role that unpaid work could or should play insocio-economic policy-making. The paper provides a working definition of unpaid work as well asvaluable information on related issues such as: how much unpaid work is done and by whom; whysome work go unpaid; the role of unpaid work in the economy; the differences and similarities ofunpaid work between developing and developed economies; methods of measuring and imputing thevalue of unpaid work; the United Nations and the issue of unpaid work; and an assessment of activitiescarried out on the theme of unpaid work since the World Summit for Social Development and theWorld Conference on Women. Finally, the paper provides a systematic inventory of policies withrespect to unpaid work, including employment and labour market policies.

Contents

Abstract .......................................................................................... iii

Introduction .........................................................................................vii

I. Unpaid work – some basic facts, approaches anddiscussions ................................................................................1

II. The value of unpaid work ..........................................................7

III. Copenhagen and Beijing revisited: The United Nations andthe issue of unpaid work.........................................................11

IV. Policies with respect to unpaid work .....................................15

V. Conclusion: Unpaid work – whose issue is it? .....................31

References ..........................................................................................33

Introduction

Unpaid work has been given increased attention sincethe sixties and seventies, when it - partially andhesitantly - reached the research agenda's ofmainstream economics and sociology. For a longtime economists had equated work with paidemployment, while sociologists specializing in labourquestions had left the issue for their (often less presti-gious) colleagues occupied with the sociology of thefamily.

Thirty years later, the issue of unpaid workwas heatedly discussed at two United Nations WorldConferences, the Social Summit (Copenhagen, March1995) and the Fourth World Conference on Women(Beijing, September 1995). Government diplomatsand NGO s' lobbyists not only negotiated languageon measuring and valuing unpaid work, but alsoagreed - all be it implicitly - on a new way of lookingat the world's work, i.e. comprising both paid andunpaid work. The controversy concerning theincorporation of unpaid work in national accountsand other statistics, however, has obscured the factthat recognizing unpaid work as work is a revolutionin itself.

The consequences of this new vision havehardly been explored in the follow-up processesemanating from the two world conferences. Althoughit seems hardly possible to speak of unpaid workwithout discussing its counterpart, paid work, therelationship between both is not much studied. Therole unpaid work could or should play in socio-economic policy-making has not yet been adequatelydiscussed.

This paper tries to put forward somematerial to support the implementation processes ofboth the Copenhagen and the Beijing Conferencesand considers the unpaid work issue - including therelationship between paid and unpaid work - from apolicy perspective.

Section I provides a general summary of the issue ofunpaid work:

Unpaid work does not simply consist of onespecific type of activity, for instance housework, but

it encompasses a variety of activities. Critical for thedefinition of the concept of unpaid work is the so-called 'third person criterion'. This criterion implies aproduction boundary containing non-market activitiesthat in principle could be replaced by market goodsand services.

United Nations studies and other researchhave estimated how much unpaid work is done andby whom. On average, unpaid working time amountsto hours a week which are comparable to hoursworked in paid employment. The burden of unpaidwork and paid work respectively are distributedunequally between men and women. As a result, 'menreceive the lion's share of income and recognition fortheir economic contribution - while most of women'swork remains unpaid, unrecognized and undervalued'(UNDP, 1995).

It is not some inherent trait which causessome activities to be paid or unpaid. The sameactivity may be paid or unpaid, depending on thesocial context. Economists have highlighted techno-logical innovation, changes in productivity andrelative prices. Students of women's studies haveconcentrated on the sexual division of labour. Theunequal distribution of unpaid work between womenand men is substantially linked to the sex-segregatedlabour market and the prevailing sex discriminationand domination of men's values in society at large.The paid and the unpaid sectors of the economy areeach others counterpart, and changes in one partcannot be brought about without changes in the other.A very substantial share of human needs is satisfiedby the fruits of unpaid labour. The economic signifi-cance of unpaid work must be gigantic. Economists,however, have had great difficulties in integratingunpaid work in their scientific endeavours. Someschools of thought are briefly discussed.

Unpaid work should not be confused withthe concept of the informal sector. Most work in theinformal sector generates income, however small andunrecorded that may be. The informal sector can beseen as an intermediate zone between unpaid workand regularly paid employment.

A portion of the citizens counted as doingunpaid work, are in fact 'discouraged workers' andshould be counted as 'hidden unemployed'. Becausethey don't receive a social security benefit or welfare,their unemployment seems to cost nothing.

It is often said that the issue of unpaid workis very different for industrialized and developingcountries. This is true as far as the sort of activitiesperformed as unpaid work differs very much insocieties of different stages of development. Acommon denominator, however, seems to be theinfinite elasticity of unpaid work: apparently it can bestretched or contracted, if need be. The costs of shiftsbetween these two sectors of the economy are largelyinvisible.

Section II summarizes the most important issues andcontroversies in this field and indicates the currentstate of research findings. The UN has contributedsignificantly to the progress in this field of study.This summary forms the necessary background forthe policy questions dealt with later in this paper.After a short description of the methods formeasuring and imputing the value of unpaid work,the arguments pro and contra the incorporation ofunpaid work in the System of National Accounts arediscussed. There is a short digression on the Wagesfor Housework movement, which was such an impor-tant actor lobbying this issue before and at the SocialSummit and the Beijing Women's Conference.

Section III gives an overview of how the issue ofunpaid work was put on the agenda at the two UNconferences.

Unpaid work as a women's or gender issuehas a long UN history. Originally it was perceived as'women's double burden', but after the First Women'sConference (Mexico City, 1975) another paradigmprevailed. Since then, the question of unpaid workhas been seen as an issue of unjust distribution and/orinefficient allocation between the sexes. This shouldbe brought back into balance by (a) promoting equalsharing of family responsibilities between womenand men, (b) providing a better infrastructure ofpublic or social services. Sex equality at theworkplace and the sharing of domestic and parentalresponsibilities are interrelated. Therefore onlycombined strategies - aiming at both the sphere ofunpaid work and the world of formal gainful

employment - might be successful in changing theuneven distribution of unpaid work.

Unpaid work as a social issue has a muchshorter history at the UN; it really dates from thepreparatory process of the Social Summit itself. Adialogue took place between those who consider fullemployment a feasible goal, and those who thoughtthat goal neither feasible nor desirable and promotedrecognition of all sorts of 'useful activities' as work oremployment in a broader sense. The consequences ofthis broadening of the concept of work were notexamined, however. All energy went into thecontroversy of the valuation of unpaid work and itsincorporation in national accounts.

The outcomes of both Conferences impliedthat unpaid work and its relation with paid work hadto be taken into account in the formulation of socio-economic policies. But neither of the two Confe-rences spelled out how that goal had to be accom-plished.

Section IV discusses the state of the art. Theboundaries of paid and unpaid work are influencedby market forces determining the range of the privateservice sector and by political and budgetary factorsdetermining the range of the public service sector.The choice between paid and unpaid work andprofitability/political feasibility of social servicingare two sides of the same coin. The way publicpolicies are affecting this choice is the focus of thesection.

In order to create more conceptual clarityand to illustrate what we know and what still has tobe more deeply researched, these policies are dividedinto two groups: specific or direct policies andindirect or 'mainstreamed' policies.

Specific policies are those explicitly aimedat unpaid work. Such an aim might be recognising ormaking it more visible; influencing the quantity ofunpaid work in society or changing the distribution ofunpaid work among different groups.

Various instruments can contribute to betterrecognising unpaid work: quantitative and qualitativedata collection, presentation and analysis; imputationof the value in monetary terms and giving allowancesfor unpaid work, or actually paying for it!

Four elements of modern gender equalitypolicy are discussed: (i) promoting a more equalsharing of unpaid work between women and men; (ii)

introducing changes in the organization of paidemployment, in order to facilitate the individualcombination of paid and unpaid work both by womenand by men; (iii) the provision of public services,such as child care; (iv) the commercialisation ofdomestic labour.

This section considers measures whichgovernment can take to stimulate citizens to partici-pate in voluntary community work, including a veryradical alternative option: compulsory social service.I found practically no literature on voluntary workwritten from a policy perspective. Compared to theabundance of work on the unpaid housework andcaring tasks of women and related issues, this may becalled a striking gap.

Indirect policies relating to unpaid work:Affecting unpaid work is not the primary policyobjective of these policies, but they do have (implicit)effects on unpaid work. Sometimes influencingunpaid work is built-in as an explicit secondaryobjective of a policy design. Mostly, however, main-stream socio-economic policies will have impliciteffects on unpaid work. The ways in which wage andincome policies, employment and labour marketpolicies, taxation, social security and welfare affectunpaid work in one form or the other are discussed.The implicit influence of mainstream socio-economicpolicies on unpaid work is an unexplored area.References in the scientific literature are scarce,fragmentary and difficult to track down and coherentresearch and analysis in this field has hardly started.Analysis from a gender perspective evidently hasmade most progress, but that is not proportionatelyreflected in mainstream literature. The assumeddependency of women on the male breadwinner -implicit in social security and taxation systems - is acase in point.

Two, partly conflicting, policyconsiderations play a role here. On the one handpolicy-makers have sometimes tried to do justice toexisting patterns of allocation of paid and unpaidwork and to protect the weaker party. On the otherhand, in doing so they have - intentionally orunintentionally - built up barriers to change. Thisparadox - well known to experts in the field of genderequality policy - lacks interest from the leading actorsin these fields.

Another theme is the recognition of unpaidwork as 'socially useful activities' in social benefitregulations and activating labour market policies.Policy questions in this field involve difficult choicesbetween respecting private preferences anddemanding a quid pro quo. Policy programmes suchas 'workfare' could easily pass the point where thecitizen's right freely to choose an employment wouldbe at stake.

This exercise in exploring the impliciteffects of socio-economic policies on unpaid workdoes not allow a firm conclusion. Effects arediversified, depending not only on the policiesconcerned but also on the type of unpaid work thatone has in mind. In fact, to quote DuncanIronmonger, '(w)e need a major change in our viewof reality.(...) The reality of the huge unpaidcontribution of households to economic value needsto be accepted; adopted as a benchmark fact, it wouldchange nearly all our deliberations about economicand social policy.' (Ironmonger, 1996, p.60).

Not only is such an acceptance amongpolicy-makers far away, we also have only a veryprimitive insight into the interplay of non-marketproduction and market production and how that isaffected by government policies.

Section V examines how different groups of activistsand academics use the concept of unpaid work fortheir own purposes. While they speak of 'unpaidwork' as such, they are in fact focusing on specificunpaid activities by specific parts of the populationand putting their favourite policy issues up front. TheUN has offered a forum for all these different groupsand tendencies to spread their views. Lacking anintegrating theory and a shared body of knowledge,the result is vague and fragmentary.

The unpaid work issue should not be left tothe 'women's sections' of national governments,NGOs, international organizations and the academiccommunity. Although the importance of the issuefrom a gender perspective obviously stands out, itwouldn't be sensible to leave it at that. Even in ahypothetical world of perfect gender balance unpaidwork has to be taken into account as a necessaryelement of private freedom and as a pillar of civilsociety and political democracy. In addition, even in

a world of full employment, a certain part of humanneeds would still be met by nonmarket activities. Sounpaid work should be recognized, valued and

factored in as a regular element in policy-making.Social policy that leaves the unpaid work issue out asif it were 'something else' is beside the mark.

I. UNPAID WORK – SOME BASIC FACTS,APROACHES AND DISCUSSIONS

WHAT IS UNPAID WORK?

Unpaid work can be understood to comprise allproductive activities outside the official labourmarket done by individuals for their own householdsor for others. These activities are productive in thesense that they use scarce resources to satisfy humanwants.

Housework, care for children and for sickand old people, do-it-yourself jobs and voluntarycommunity work or work in political or societalorganizations, subsistence agriculture, help in familybusinesses, building the family house, maintenancework, transport services etc have one thing incommon: they could, at least in theory, be replacedby market goods and paid services. This so-calledthird person criterion1 distinguishes unpaid workfrom consumption and from time and energy investedin one's own education (Bruyn-Hundt, 1996; p. 26).For the same reason, personal activities like sleepingand leisure activities fall outside the definition ofunpaid work. Unpaid work consists of time used asan input (often together with the use of purchasedgoods and/or consumer durables used as capitalequipment) in non-market production processes;unpaid work is part of a particular 'mode of provision'for human needs (Gershuny, 1983 and 1988).

If it is true that unpaid work is work that, inprinciple, also could be done in the context of analternative 'mode of provision' by a paid worker,then, by implication the monetary value of unpaidwork can be imputed. (The question of the value ofunpaid work will be dealt with in Section 3). It ishardly thinkable, however, that all work would bepaid, or - what amounts to the same thing - thatunpaid work would not exist. Unpaid work is anessential element in the social fabric and an importantfactor for the quality of life.

1 In a recent contribution Cynthia Woods has exposedsome problematic implications of this criterion. Seealso par. 2.2. See also: Himmelweit (1995).

Defining what unpaid activities will be takenon board in our discussion in this paper and what willbe left out involves some brain-twisting decisions.For instance, using a lawyer's perspective, RaymondLe Guidec has discussed work done in prisons as wellas the work-component in vocational training asforms of unpaid work (Le Guidec, 1996). Theseforms of unpaid work would not pass the economist'sthird person criterion test: neither the prisoner nor thetrainee could hire somebody else to perform thatwork. In addition, work in prisons is not freelychosen employment.

Furthermore, most literature on unpaid workleaves out compulsory military service. Apparently,only professional soldiers should be viewed as peoplewho 'work' (their salaries are included in the nationalaccounts!) while conscripts are merely objects of ahigher strategy. Oddly enough, when the idea ofcompulsory social service is discussed, nobodywould deny that it is work - vital work - that is atstake.

The diversity of activities caught under theheading of 'unpaid work' makes policy discussions ofunpaid work very abstract. Most authors using thisgeneral label focus on a particular type of unpaidwork in a particular context, e.g. women's domesticwork or voluntary caring work outside the home. Tobroaden the concept of work by including unpaidwork and consider the policy implications, it is indis-pensable to discuss what forms of unpaid work arerelevant in specific policy discussions.

HOW MUCH UNPAID WORK IS DONE ANDBY WHOM?

The skewed distribution of work, paid and unpaid,between women and men, was made visible in theHuman Development Report 1995. (UNDP, 1995,Ch. 4). A sample of 31 countries studied indicatednot only that of the total burden of work, women domore than men (53% in developing countries and51% in industrial countries), but also that of women's

2 DESA Discussion Paper No. 4

total work time - both in developing and in industrialcountries - roughly two-thirds is spent in unpaid workand one-third in paid work. For men in industrialcountries these shares are reversed. Men indeveloping countries spend even less of their totalwork time in unpaid work: roughly one-fourth.

Comparison of the results of time-usestudies, which differ in design and methods, is a riskyaffair. In addition, tasks performed simultaneouslyare often under-reported and the intensity of effort isnot counted. Nevertheless, two tendencies seem tohave been well established:

- On average, unpaid working time amountsto a comparable number of hours a week to thenumber of hours in paid employment.2

- The burden of unpaid work and paid workrespectively are distributed unequally between menand women. As a result, 'men receive the lion's shareof income and recognition for their economiccontribution - while most of women's work remainsunpaid, unrecognized and undervalued' (UNDP(1995), p.88).

WHY IS SOME WORK UNPAID?

As the 'third person criterion' makes clear, there is -technically - nothing inherent in the work itself thatcauses some work to be unpaid. In principle, unpaidwork can be done by a third person for money. Thesame activity may be paid or unpaid, depending onthe social context. Which tasks are unpaid and howmuch time is spent in it varies with location andculture and among different groups of the population,depending on income level, composition of thehousehold, age etc.

2Behind this average figure there are great disparities,even among industrial countries. According to thedata used in the Human Development Report 1995, inDenmark a third of total work time is unpaid work,where in the Netherlands unpaid work counts foralmost two-thirds of total work time. (UNDP, 1995,p.94, table 4.4; data of 1987). For the Netherlands inthe period 1975-1990 it was calculated that thenumber of hours of unpaid work per year wasbetween 1.5 and 1.9 times higher than paid work forthe whole population of 12 years and over (Bruyn-Hundt, 1996, p.59).

A very important factor determining thechoice between unpaid work and buying marketservices is the price of such services (and theiravailability), as well as the price of the domesticcapital goods (e.g. washing machines used in theunpaid domestic production process). Gershuny hasshown how historically (at least in the Westernworld) 'the growth in the household economy (and inthe closely associated communal sector) is promotedby the rising costs of purchased services relative tothe declining cost of 'domestic capital goods'(Gershuny, 1983, p.35).

Despite this seemingly gender-neutral,classical economic reasoning, it can be no coinciden-ce that the bulk of unpaid work is traditional women'sactivity in and around the household, like cleaning,cooking, washing, childcare, shopping, while indeveloping countries it is mainly women who toil forhours gathering fuel wood and water and tendingsubsistence land, producing foodstuffs for con-sumption by their households. (It is beyond thescope of this paper to review the 'domestic labourdebate' of the seventies and reflect upon its academicaftermath. See a.o.: Pahl (1988), part III).

It must be borne in mind, however, that theunequal distribution of unpaid work between womenand men is substantially linked to the sex-segregatedlabour market and the prevailing sex discriminationand domination of men's values in society at large(See e.g. Baxter and Gibson, 1990; OECD, 1991).Though 'patriarchy' as a concept now looks out ofdate, and feminist scholars no longer bother whetherunpaid domestic labour is a source of 'surplus value',production and reproduction still constitute what isknown as the sexual division of labour (Bullock,1994, p.2).

It therefore may be enlightening to look atthe unequal shares of men and women in the worldsof paid and unpaid work as the two pillars of the sex-gender system (Rubin, 1975). Both parts of thatsystem are each others' counterpart, and changes inone part cannot be brought about without changes inthe other (Glucksman, 1995; Humphries and Rubery,1984). Conceiving the inter-linkages between paidand unpaid work in gender-neutral terms, as in thestudies of Gershuny mentioned before, obscures acrucial factor in this complex.

3 Unpaid work - some basic facts, approaches and discussions

THE ROLE OF UNPAID WORK IN THEECONOMY - AND IN ECONOMICS.

Unpaid work by the world's men and women onaverage encompasses at least as much of their time asdoes paid work. A very substantial share of humanneeds is satisfied by the fruits of unpaid labour. Thissimple fact could be taken to imply that the economicsignificance of unpaid work must be gigantic.Economists, however, have had great difficulties inintegrating unpaid work in their intellectual endea-vors.

In Marxist economics, unpaid work,especially women's housework, is labelled 'reproduc-tion'. The concept of reproduction in Marxisteconomics refers to reproduction of the labour-force,both on a daily basis and between generations.Reproduction is to be distinguished from production,that is characterized by the phenomenon of surplus-value. Both spheres, however, are interdependent, asthe organization of production presupposes andreinforces a certain way of organizing domesticwork. Depending on the changing interest of capitaland the state, parts of the reproductive functions ofthe family sometimes are taken over by publicfacilities and at other times transferred back to thefamily. Marxist philosophy also gives reproductionan immaterial meaning: women's caring role in thefamily reinforces the existing societal relations.(cf.Pahl (1988), Part III).

Neo-classical economics looks at unpaidwork essentially as a form of consumption - a logicalconsequence of the emphasis put on marketphenomena. Unpaid work, especially of marriedwomen, is taken into account in the study of (female)labour supply, but it is still treated as a form ofleisure (c.f. the so-called labour-leisure analysis).John Kenneth Galbraith (1974), however, called thepost-war American housewife a 'crypto-servant' forher critical role in the expansion and administrationof private consumption. Ivan Illich (1981) becamefamous for his rather critical analysis of women's'shadow work' that became a necessary complementto wage labour in modern industrialized economies.

Gary Becker's famous article 'A theory ofthe allocation of time' (1965) marked the beginningof a new school of thought: the New Home

Economics. Becker considered the family as 'a smallfactory' where households divide their time betweenpaid employment, unpaid household production andleisure. The school of New Home Economicsexplicitly or implicitly rejected the dichotomybetween production and consumption. Theyenvisaged a production function of the household,that reflects the production of commodities bycombining market goods and time. Becker and hisfollowers have been criticized by feminist economistsfor taking the household as a unit of analysis, and inthat way obscuring conflicts of interest and overpower inside the household (Ferber and Nelson,1993).

Economists interested in unpaid work havemostly concentrated on micro-analysis of householdwork. Far less is known of the macro-economicsignificance of unpaid work. At the macro-level, 'aniceberg view of the economy' prevails: what is visibleis actually only a very small part of what goes on inthe economy (Naila Kabeer in UNRISD, 1977, p.14). Feminist economists, however, are very rapidlymaking up for this omission by highlighting theoverall economic importance of non-market work,such as subsistence production and caring activity.

Fewer economic data and analyses areavailable on various forms of voluntary communitywork; voluntary work - translated in the catchword'civil society' - is more the domain of political philos-ophy. This paper concentrates on a socio-economicperspective and related questions of public policy.

UNPAID WORK AND THE INFORMALSECTOR

Some authors (e.g. Offe and Heinze, 1992; Portes,cited in Benschop, 1995; Plantenga and Sloep, 1995)include unpaid work in their definitions of 'theinformal sector' or 'the informal economy'. This maybe a tempting suggestion, as both unpaid work andactivities in the informal sector are largely unregiste-red and unrecorded in official statistics and are notreflected in the national accounts that measure acountry's GNP. In that sense, both types of work are'informal'. The difficulties with respect to


incorporation in national accounts and other statisticsare comparable (see Section III).

For analytical purposes it seems more en-lightening to adhere to the original meaning of theinformal sector concept. Following the definitioncoined by the ILO in the seventies, the informalsector refers to the 'working poor' in urban areas ofdeveloping countries, working in very small-scaleunits, mostly self-employed or with some assistanceof family members or hired workers. Their income-generating activities are informal in the sense thatthey are not registered and not recognized orregulated by the government (ILO, 1991, p.4). Thisdefinition was given a more rigorous form by theresolution adopted by the International Conference ofLabour Statisticians in 1993. Units engagedexclusively in non-market production, that issubsistence units, are excluded from this definition ofthe informal sector, but it is recommended to make aspecial effort to include the unpaid work in familyenterprises.

Unregistered employment is also a wides-pread phenomenon in many transition countries,(UN, 1997a, p.162). Similar forms of unregisteredwork in industrialized countries are described underthe category of 'the black economy', indicating theevasion of income tax and social security contributi-ons. In contrast to unpaid work, most work in theinformal sector is done for money, however uncertainlabour contracts and conditions may be.

The informal sector can function as astepping-stone to regular employment for personswithout (formal) paid work who want to regain theireconomic independence or supplement their (low)unemployment benefits. Transforming informalsector jobs into regular employment is therefore asubject often mentioned as part of active labourmarket policies. In that sense the informal sector canbe seen as an intermediate zone between unpaid workand formal employment.

UNPAID WORK AND DISGUISEDUNEMPLOYMENT

Statistical measures of involuntary unemployment3

usually omit a large group of potential entrants to the

3The ILO considers an individual to be unemployed if

labour force who simply do not qualify. They -mainly women - don't take active steps to 'seek work'.Although they want to work in paid employment,they see no feasible opportunities, due to slim jobprospects or childcare commitments. These 'discou-raged workers' should be incorporated in theestimation of hidden unemployment in the same wayas the 'hidden unemployed' who enjoy a disability orearly retirement pension.4 Because of the visiblecosts of the social security benefits they arereceiving, the latter group is often considered a maintarget for governmental labour market policies. thehidden unemployment of persons counted as doingunpaid work seems to cost nothing.

UNPAID WORK IN DEVELOPING ANDDEVELOPED COUNTRIES: DIFFERENCESAND SIMILARITIES

The well-known image of unpaid work in developingcountries is that of the hard life of poor people doingsubsistence work, i.e. - according to the 1988 ILOdefinition: “providing food, shelter and a minimumof cash income for themselves and their households"(United Nations, 1995c, p. 114). The process ofmodernization and development implies that accessto markets, improved household technologies, betterpublic facilities and more availability of ready-madegoods for consumption will cause less time to bespent in unpaid work. Often, economic adjustmentprograms have had an opposite effect: forcing womenout of paid employment to replace the reduced publicservices by their unpaid labour (See a.o.Bakker, p.16 ff). Moreover, it can be assumed - taking con-sumer behaviour in the Western world as an example- that economic growth will raise expectations andthereby induce more unpaid input into qualitativeimprovements of the domestic production processes.

he or she is currently umemployed, is activily seekingemployment and is available for employment withinsome time period mutually acceptable to both theprospective employee and a prospective employer.For a critical reflection, see UN (1997a), p.132-133.

4An example of such an estimation is to be found inLangmore and Quiggin (1994), p. 22-24.

5 Unpaid work - some basic facts, approaches and discussions

The well-known image of unpaid work indeveloped countries is no longer of the full-timehousewife, but of the dual-carrier couple or the singleadult household struggling (or rather: juggling - see:Bittman, 1991) to combine gainful employment withthe inevitable domestic drudgery and caring tasks.They experience the importance of the availabilityand accessibility of commercial and public servicesis: opening times in the retail trade are no longertrivial details. Care for the very young and for theelderly, too costly to be supplied as a professionalservice by the community, must be organized asvoluntary work. This in turn necessitates leave

arrangements in the labour market. In addition, gapsin private and public service delivery are sometimesfilled by volunteers.

In other words, although the sort of workthat is unpaid differs very much between societies indifferent stages of development, a commondenominator seems to be the supposedly infiniteelasticity of unpaid work: apparently it can bestretched or contracted, at will (cf. Connelly, 1996,p.25). The costs of shifts between these two sectorsof the economy are largely invisible, however. Thiscommon denominator is often overlooked in thedebate on unpaid work. (See also par. 2.2.).

II. THE VALUE OF UNPAID WORK

METHODS FOR MEASURING ANDIMPUTING THE VALUE OF UNPAID WORK

In principle, there are two ways to measure and valueunpaid work, the input method and the output method(Cf. Bruyn-Hundt, 1996, Ch. 3).

The 'input method' counts hours worked inunpaid productive activities and assigns a price to it,using a comparable wage rate. Time use surveys aremostly used to tackle the quantitative side of theequation [value quantity x price]. Although thereare many methodological problems connected withtime use studies, they can in principle be solved byentering into (international) agreements concerningstandard definitions etc. The price component couldby calculated in different ways:

(a) The opportunity cost method values theunpaid working time of an individual at thewage rate he or she is entitled to expect at thelabour market5.(b) The market replacement cost methodvalues unpaid services at the price thoseservices could be purchased in the market. Asfar as housework or household production isconcerned there are two variations of themarket replacement cost method.

The global substitute is considered to be someonewho can perform all tasks of the homemaker. Withthis method the price of housework is the averagewage of home helpers. The alternative is measuringthe market replacement costs of 'specializedsubstitutes', assuming that different persons withdifferent occupational qualifications or trainingwould take over different household tasks (e.g.cooks, cleaners, nurses etc.). A general ambiguity ofboth versions of this replacement costs method is thatthey tend to reproduce the systemic wage discrimina-

5The main objection to this method is called "thehomemakers paradox": the value of the same unpaidtask (say a nice home prepared dinner) would behigher if done by my boss instead of by me, althoughI may be the better cook.

tion of female workers, specially in so-called femaleoccupations (Luxton, 1997).

Bruyn-Hundt (1996, p.39) rejects thespecialized substitutes' approach, because the pro-ductivity of a specialist is higher than theproductivity of a non-specialist. This methodtherefore overestimates the value of homeproduction. Moreover, wage scales and definitions offunctions of specialists tend to change over time,which makes it difficult to compare data for differentyears. The single market replacement is clearly themost practical method. It is this method that is usedin the study of the value of household production in13 industrial countries undertaken for the HumanDevelopment Report 1995 (UNDP, 1995, p.96). Theeight OECD countries from which monetaryestimates of household production have beencompared, have mostly publicized various estimatesusing different varieties of the input method (OECD,1995, p.16). Valuation of household production onthe basis of gross housekeepers' wages is alsorecommended by Statistics Finland in their proposalfor developing a household satellite accounts systemcommissioned by Eurostat (to be published in 1998,cf. Varjonen and Niemi).

The 'output method' tries to measure theresults of unpaid production by assigning a price tothe quantities of goods and services produced. Theoutput method is theoretically superior, but identify-ing physical units of output is difficult (OECD, 1995,p.12). Although it is feasible to think of squaremetres of floor mopped, and kilograms of foodprepared, the quality of products and services can notbe accounted for. For Bruyn-Hundt (1996, p. 46) thisdifficulty is a decisive reason to reject the outputmethod. In practice, the output method is seldomused in its pure form, because of lack of data. Mostly,input measures are used as a proxy for outputmeasures.

Duncan Ironmonger has introduced a way oftackling these difficulties by reflecting the productionprocesses within private households in aggregateinput-output tables. Final outputs, such as meals, arevalued at market prices; the value of unpaid labour


inputs are calculated as the residual item afterdeduction of the costs of capital and intermediateinputs used. Household outputs are categorized in sixbroad headings: accommodation, meals, (clean)clothes, transport, recreation and care. They arevalued at market prices. (Activities such as shoppingand cleaning are considered to be 'ancillary'activities; the outputs of such activities do not have tobe counted). At an aggregate level, these data giveinsight into household 'industries', that provide goodsand services in competition with parallel marketindustries (Ironmonger, 1996, 1997, 1998).Household input-output tables or estimations havebeen published for six countries - Australia, Canada,Finand, Sweden, Norway and the United States(Ironmonger, 1997).

It is beyond the scope of this paper toelaborate in greater detail the technical questionsconcerning the valuation of unpaid work or to give anextensive overview of the results of differentmeasurement methods. Bruyn-Hundt (1996, p.50) haslisted 33 calculations performed between 1921 and1995 in various countries that range from 5.9 to 72 %of GNP! The great variety in approaches andmethods makes this comparison useless.

The Human Development Report 1995(p.97), using a uniform approach with extra grosswages of a domestic worker as the relevant marketprice (but undoubtedly still based on very differenttime-use studies), found that unpaid work accountsfor 72% of GNP in Australia, 53% in Germany and45% in Finland.6 The report concludes that, whateverthe method used, the value of unpaid work inindustrial countries is considerable. 'It is at least halfof gross domestic product and it accounts for morethan half of private consumption' (UNDP, 1995,p.97; italics in the original). On a global level (...), 'ifthese unpaid activities were treated as markettransactions at the prevailing wages, they would yieldhuge monetary valuations - a staggering $16 trillion,or about 70% more than the officially estimated $23

6Bruyn-Hundt (1996, Ch.4) calculated for theNetherlands in the periode 1975 - 1990 that the valueof unpaid work (at gross minimum wages plusemployers' contribution to social security) has variedbetween 51 and 68 % of GNP. Using the wages of ahome help as price component, these percentages arebetween 63 and 82 %.

trillion of global output' (....)7 Of this $16 trillion, $11trillion is the non-monetized, "invisible" contributionof women' (ibid.).

THE INCORPORATION OF UNPAID WORKIN THE SYSTEM OF NATIONAL ACCOUNTS

Since the first UN attempt to standardize nationalincome accounting among its member states in thefifties, there has been a debate about whether unpaidwork should or should not be incorporated in theSystem of National Accounts (SNA). Essentially, thearguments in favour and against this idea have beenthe following.

Pro: By incorporating the value of unpaidwork in the national accounts, they would much morerealistically reflect real growth and welfare of anation and make comparisons between differentpoints in time and between different countries morevalid.

It would also provide more accuratemeasures of the effects of the business cycle, capitalaccumulation in private households and thedistribution of real income over individuals orhouseholds. It would unveil the shifts betweengovernment-financed services and unpaid family carethat occur as a consequence of increases orreductions of the public budget.

Incorporating subsistence agriculture wouldthrow light on an important element of the process ofdevelopment and highlight the need for investmentsin this sector. Making visible women's contribution inunpaid housework and childcare would illustrate theconsequent loss in earning capacity and thereforesupport the need for training and retraining (Bruyn-Hundt (1996), p.76-80; UNDP, (1995), p. 97-98,Waring (1988), 284-285). In short, “measure it tomake it count!” (Eisner, 1996)8.

7'This estimate includes the value of the unpaid workperformed by women and men as well as theunderpayment of women's work in the market atprevailing wages' (ibid.; italics in the original).

8The arguments in favour of incorparating unpaidwork in the system of national accounts, contain inmy view two essential flaws: (1) the positive effectsforseen in reality are often not the results of the

9 The value of unpaid work

Contra: The arguments against theimputation of unpaid work in National Accounts aremainly of two types:

First, there are normative arguments derivedfrom views what economics is about. Some say thatunpaid activities as such fall outside the relevant pro-duction boundary, because they cannot be separatelyidentified as activities in an economic sense(involving the choice to use scarce resources for oneor more alternate purposes).

A similar argument is the idea that imputedincome does not have the same significance asmonetary income, because it does not give theconsumer freedom to choose on what goods orservices he or she can spend it now or later; theimputed income from unpaid work is bound to theoutput of the unpaid production process itself.

Second, there are more practical arguments,of which the difficulties of measuring and valuingunpaid work are most widely cited. However, as wehave seen, these difficulties could in principle beovercome. This leaves us with the main argumentagainst the incorporation of unpaid work in theSystem of National Accounts: it would damage itsusefulness as an indicator for the development of themarket economy. Time-series analysis of data on thebusiness cycle, inflation, unemployment etc. wouldbecome impossible because of the changeddefinitions of incomes and expenditures in the SNA.

The most logical answer to that objection, ofcourse, is to present both the 'old' and the 'new'version of the national accounts together. However,most economists working in this field seem to beinclined to relegate the measurement and valuation ofunpaid work to so-called satellite accounts of theSNA (Bruyn-Hundt, (1996), p.75-76; 79-80),following the recommendation of the UN StatisticalCommission for the preparation of such accounts thatare “separate from, but consistent with” core national

incorporation of unpaid work in the SNA but of itsvaluation in monetary terms as such. (2) Desirablechanges in public policy are sometimes seen as amore or less automatic consequence of a changedsystem of national accounts (or other statistics forthat matter), ignoring political will and thecomplexities of the policy-making process.

accounts. That is also the quintessence of the langu-age adopted on this issue at both the Social Summitand the World Conference on Women in 1995.

While these arguments were beingexchanged by economists in their learned forums andby government delegates in the preparatory processesof the UN World Conferences to be held in 1995,other officials had - as it were silently - introduced amajor change concerning the incorporation of unpaidwork in the System of National Account. The 1993revision of the SNA recommended that all productionof goods in households for their own consumption beincluded, but it still excluded own-account produc-tion of services. This means that (subsistence)agriculture and non-market production of goods forhousehold consumption now fall inside theproduction boundary as recommended by the SNA,but that housework (including meal preparation),child and elderly care and other family related servi-ces are still excluded. (See: System of nationalaccounts 1993; UN, 1995 c, p.107).

A recent analysis by Cynthia Wood (1997)has made clear that this distinction has a strong malechauvinist, first world bias: unpaid work in the thirdworld that is likely to be replaced by paid work whenthe economy would be further developed is included,but unpaid work in the third world that looks likeunpaid housework as it prevails in the first world isexcluded. Anyhow, the 1993 revision of the SNA onthis issue forms an inconsistent application of thethird party criterion. Would it be exaggerated to sup-pose that this inconsistency can be explained as adecision dominated by senior male economistscoming from first world countries who simply cannotgrasp the idea that what a housewife does (what theirwives do) might be called 'work' ?

According to Joann Vanek, as a result of the1993 revision of the SNA, 'in developing countriesthe priority for improving statistics on unpaid work ischange in the methods of collecting data rather thanin the concept of what is considered economic'(Vanek, 1996, p.123). This has contributed to afurther underestimation of the similarities of the issuein both parts of the world (cf. par.1.7).

In conclusion, Lourdes Beneria is in myview too optimistic when she asserts that “con-ceptually, at least, the battle against the invisibility of


women's work seems largely to have been won”(Beneria, 1997, p.118). Women's domestic work isstill uncounted.

It remains to be seen whether householdproduction satellite accounts, such as developed byStatistics Finland for Eurostat, (cf. Varjonen andNiemi, 1998) can be implemented widely enough tofill that gap.

WAGES FOR HOUSEWORK?

The drive to discuss the incorporation of the value ofunpaid work in the SNA at the UN stems for a verylarge part from the actions of a particular group ofNGOs that has been active on the issue of women'shousework for more than two decades9.

The ideological background of thismovement lies in the now 'classic' feminist-Marxistanalyses of Mariarosa Dalla Costa (1972) and SelmaJames (1953/1972). The plea for a housewife's wage10

brought a lot discord in the women's movement of theseventies and the campaign did not succeed in havingits vision adopted by UN forums. With remarkableflexibility the demands were thereupon changed fromwages for housework to recognition, measurementand valuation, apparently as goals in themselves. Thismade the demands of this campaign much moreacceptable11. The proponents of this campaign cele-brated the deal struck at the Beijing Conference astheir greatest

9See the postings at the Beijing 95 - mailinglist at theoccasion of the International Wages for HouseworkCampaign's Silver Jubilee ( 20 and 21 July 1997).

10This plea was first published by Selma James in abrochure written for the Women's LiberationConference held in Manchester in 1972, titled'Women, Unions and Work, or...What is not to bedone'. (Grotenhuis (1980), p.127).11The representatives of these NGO's were criticizedby many participants, both at and before the SocialSummit and the Women's Conference, for theirvehement rhethoric and all too loud and massivepresence. The success of the campaign was perhapsattained not thanks to but in spite of its proponents!

triumph,12 but wages for housework may still be theirultimate - though temporarily hidden - objective.

The idea of wages for housework should beclearly distinguished from social benefits like childallowances or the concept of the 'family wage', i.e. awage (for the male breadwinner) consideredsufficient to support a family. A housewife's wage isto be understood as a personal reward for thehousework and child care tasks of the (traditional)housewife paid to her by the state. This would giveher - at least in the short run - a certain degree ofeconomic independence.

In all proposals of wages for housework thepay is low and temporary, i.e. wages stop or decreaseas soon as the children are grown up. The mainobjection to the idea of wages for housework is that itwould not enhance women's economic independencein the long run, because it would discourage labourmarket participation and investments in educationand vocational training of women. It wouldcontribute to maintaining the traditional division ofwork between women and men instead of unfreezingit (Bruyn-Hundt (1996), p.164-168).

12 Cf. footnote 9

III. COPENHAGEN AND BEIJING REVISITED: THEUNITED NATIONS AND THE ISSUE OF UNPAIDWORK

At the United Nations, the issue of unpaid work hadreached the political agenda via two routes: first,already a quarter of a century ago, via the Women'sBranch of the Organization, and secondly, quiterecently, via a social or socio-economic angle, in thepreparatory process of the Social Summit. Thesedifferent origins have produced partly dissimilarviews and policy recommendations.

UNPAID WORK AS A WOMEN'S OR GENDERISSUE

The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW)first took up the issue of women's unpaid work in theearly seventies - then phrased as the issue of 'thefamily responsibilities of working women' and their'double burden' (Resolution 2 (XXIII). The reportprepared as a result of that resolution, however, wastitled 'Working women and the sharing of householdduties' (E/CN.6/613, 22 December 1977). Thisreflects the consensus established at the MexicoConference13 (1975) on the equity of the sharing ofhousehold chores between men and women and onthe role of governments and society at large infacilitating the combination of family and workobligations. A similar shift in focus, from definingthe unpaid workload of women as a problem ofwomen, especially of working women, to a morecomprehensive view including the roles of men andof the state, can be seen in the ILO. Recommendation123 on the Employment of Women with Family

13Report of the World Conference of the InternationalWomen's Year, Mexico City, 19 June - 2 July 1975,in : The United Nations and the Advancement ofWomen 1945 - 1995. New York: United Nations,1995 (The United Nations Blue Book Series, vol.VI). See Mexico Declaration, par 5; World Plan ofAction, para's 101, 130 and 132.

Responsibilities (1965) was superseded bythe Workers with Family Responsibilities Convention(ILO - Convention nr. 1956, adopted 1981).14

Since the Mexico Conference this twofoldapproach has become more or less accepted languagein international forums on women's issues. Thequestion of unpaid work is seen as an issue of unjustdistribution and/or inefficient allocation between thesexes, that should be brought back into balance by (a)promoting equal sharing of family responsibilitiesbetween women and men, and (b) providing a betterinfrastructure of public or social services, child-careoften being the first mentioned. The second UNWorld Conference on Women (Copenhagen, 1980)however clearly spelled out that besides child care,other basic public facilities and social services likehousing, safe water and energy supply must be put inplace, '(...) in order to alleviate the workloadtraditionally imposed on women in their performanceof tasks essential for the survival of theircommunities, and to increase their levels of gainfulemployment and productivity (...)'.15 In other words,here the issue was put in a development perspective.

The same twofold approach mentionedbefore was very clearly expressed in the Nairobi

14The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms ofDiscrimination against Women (adopted 1979)contains in Article 5 provisions of the same kind ondebunking the dominant gender ideology andensuring joint family responsibility for children'supbringing.

15Programme of Action for the Second Half of theUnited Nations Decade for Women., para. 129.Report of the World Conference on the UnitedNations Decade for Women: Equality, Developmentand Peace, held in Copenhagen, 14 - 30 July 1980.See UN (1995).


Forward-looking Strategies, adopted at the end-ofdecade conference in 198516.

An interesting post-Women's Decade eventwas the Expert Group Meeting on Social SupportMeasures, held in Vienna, 14-18 November 1988, inpreparation of the 33rd session of CSW(E/CN.6/1989/6 and Addendum). This meeting espe-cially highlighted the interrelationship between sexequality at the workplace and the sharing of domesticand parental responsibilities and emphasized thatonly combined strategies - aimed at both the sphereof unpaid work and the world of paid employment -would be successful in changing the uneven distri-bution of unpaid work.

The same double approach to unpaid workas a question of private redistribution and publicintervention can be found in the Platform for Actionadopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women(Beijing, September 1995). At the Beijingconference, that two-fold approach in itself did notarouse much debate or controversy, although somediplomatic fine-tuning was necessary to arrive at awording that reflected the respective roles of govern-ments, NGOs and private citizens17. At Beijing, thefocus was on the measurement and valuation ofunpaid work and its incorporation in nationalaccounts. In the end, a text on that specific aspectcould only be adopted as part of a package-deal18 thatembraced a wider framework of recommendations onthe role of women in development, improvements in

16Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies for theAdvancement of Women, para 121. Report of theWorld Conference to Review and Appraise theAchievements of the United Nations Decade forWomen: Equality, Development and Peace, held inNairobi, 15 - 28 July 1985. See UN (1995).

17See e.g. the Platform for Action, para's 173 g and179 c. Report of the Fourth World Conference onWomen ( Beijing, 4-15 September 1995).A/CONF/177/20.

18Cf. Platform for Action, para's 156, 165, 204 b, 206e, f, g, and 209.Par. 206 f sub (i) acknowledges that the unpaid workdone in agriculture, particularly in subsistenceagriculture, and other types of non-market productionactivities are since the 1993 revision included in theSNA.Cf. Vanek (1996), p.124.

statistics and gender analysis and making visible andchanging the unequal distribution of paid and unpaidwork between women and men.

In conclusion, the outcome of the BeijingConference implied that the unpaid work of womenhad to be more recognized and had taken into accountin the formulation of socio-economic policies, but itdid not spell out how that goal could be accomplishedother than by better measurement and statistics.

UNPAID WORK AS A SOCIAL ISSUE

As can be concluded from the previous section, theWomen’s Branch of the UN (DAW, CSW, and fourWorld Conferences) have been quite active on unpaidwork as a substantial policy issue. The 'social sector'of the UN, especially the Commission for SocialDevelopment, has in comparison been laggingbehind. Mostly, the question of unpaid work washidden under the heading of 'the family'. Thisperspective did not bring any new focus of analysis.Such a novelty had to wait for the preparatoryprocess of the Social Summit19. The final outcome ofthis process was a section in the Programme ofAction on 'A broader recognition and understandingof work and employment' (Ch.3E).

The focus originally was the drive to extendthe concept of work to include unpaid work, mainlyto recognise all sorts of 'social activities' likevolunteer work and 'semi-employment' that often re-place employment for those ‘not that employable' - atypical welfare approach. The background of thisoutcome was the dialogue between those whoadvocated full employment for all as a feasible goal,and those who thought that goal neither feasible nordesirable and promoted recognition of all sorts of'useful activities' as work or employment in a broadersense. The first group clearly won the debate. Thiscan been seen in the rather vague contents of therecommendations concerning these 'useful activities'.When the discussion became influenced by the inputsfrom women's NGOs and femocrats inside govern-ments, both the recognition of (women's) unpaid

19Report of the World Summit on SocialDevelopment, Copenhagen, 6-12 March 1995(A/CONF.116/9).

13 Copenhagen and Beijing revisited

work and the demand for more flexibility in alloca-ting time over paid and unpaid work were alsoincorporated under this heading. In addition, Com-mitment 5 of the Copenhagen Declaration paidtribute to the principles of equal partnership andshared responsibilities of women and men and otherfamiliar women's demands. Although much energyof delegations at the Social Summit had to beallocated to the controversy of unpaid work and itsmeasurement in the national accounts20 - a debate thatin fact was a dress rehearsal for the Beijing WorldConference on Women that was to take place somemonths later - the real novelty was this broadening ofthe very concept of productive work.

The outcome of the Social Summit impliedthat unpaid work and its relationship with paidemployment had to be taken into account into socio-economic policy-making. The Summit, however, didnot formulate the agenda for the implementation ofsuch a vision.

THE UN AND UNPAID WORK AFTER 1995

After the Copenhagen Summit and the BeijingWomen's Conference, the issue of unpaid workreappeared at the agendas of various inter-governmental gatherings, though the outcomes ofthese discussions up to now can only be characterizedas uneven and fragmentary.

Commission on the Status of WomenThe Commission on the Status of Women in

its 40th session (1996) discussed child and dependentcare, including sharing of work and familyresponsibilities. Both the Secretariat's report(E/CN.6/1996/5) and the Agreed Conclusions 1996/3(E/CN.6/1996/15, p. 14 ff) covered familiar ground,by focusing on increasing the role of men (esp. viaeducation), reforms in labour and social securitylegislation and the introduction of a family supportsystem. 20In contrast to the Beijing Platform for Action, thetexts adopted at Copenhagen Summit do not giveevidence that delegates were aware of the 1993changes of the SNA.

At its 41st session (1997) the CSW took upthe theme Women in the Economy. The Secretariat'spreparatory documentation (E/CN.6/1997/3) and thepanel discussion and dialogue held during thissession (E/CN.6/1997/9, p. 44) paid only meagreattention to unpaid work. The Agreed Conclusions1997/3 (ibid., p. 12 ff) only touched upon the issue ofmeasurement and valuation and the sharing of unpaidand paid work between women and men.

Commission for Social DevelopmentThe Commission for Social Development, in

charge of the follow-up to the Social Summit,discussed the employment issue as its priority themeat its 35th session (1997).

Whoever might have expected here a furtherdiscussion of unpaid work as an element in economicpolicy-making, would have been very disappointed.Although the agenda contained an explicit referenceto 'a broader recognition of work and employment'(Ch.3E of the Copenhagen Plan of Action), theSecretariat's preparatory document (E/CN.5/1997/3),mainly prepared by the ILO21, almost ignored thistheme, as did the panel discussion held during thissession. The EU Presidency criticized this omissionin their intervention in the debate and remarked that'these questions clearly deserve to be furtherdiscussed - not only from the angle of conceptualclarity, but also for its practical relevance in theframework of job creation and the fight against longterm exclusion from the labour market of the mostvulnerable groups'. However, the result was only oneparagraph in the resolution that held the AgreedConclusions (E.CN.5/1997/11, res.35/2, para 24) - aceremonial compensation that did not involveanything new.

Statistical Commission

21The document leaned heavily on the ILO WorldEmployment Report 1996/97, which almostcompletely left out unpaid work.


The Statistical Commission held its 29th session inFebruary 1997. Unpaid work is not mentioned in thereport of this session (E/CN.3/1997/29). TheCommission did consider, however, the statisticalimplications of recent major UN conferences andadopted the MNSDS, i.e. the Minimum NationalSocial Data Set, prepared by a working group a yearbefore. Unpaid work is not included on that list of 15indicators, but is mentioned in a list of indicators 'thatare also seen as valuable and relevant for monitoring

and evaluating progress' (E/CN.3/AC.1/1996/R.4,Appendix). The report of the Commission's TaskForce on National Accounts (E/CN.3/1997/12) doesnot mention future activities concerning the measure-ment and valuation of unpaid work or itsincorporation in national accounts or satellite ac-counts. There is a (rather vague) reference to the startof the process of updating the 1993 System ofNational Accounts, however (ibid. para 33).

IV. POLICIES WITH RESPECT TO UNPAID WORK

For the purpose of social and economic policy-making it may be useful to explore the boundariesbetween unpaid work on the one hand andcommercial and public servicing on the other. How isit decided whether a given human need is fulfilled byunpaid work or by goods and services bought in themarket or supplied by the government? The NewHome Economics (cf. Becker, 1965) would answerthat that would depend on taste (i.e. non-economicpreferences), relative prices, income levels,opportunity costs of time used for unpaid work etc.

Mainstream economic literature does notmention, however, that behind these well-knownfactors there is also government intervention whichinfluences availability and profitability of services.The choices people make between unpaid work andgoods and services bought in the market or from thecommunity, are also influenced by economic policiesregarding infrastructure, the encouragement ofeconomic growth and development, the issuing ofbusiness licenses, vocational training, price regulati-on, taxation, subsidies and the like. Economicpolicies, so far, have not been studied for theirexplicit or implicit effects on the boundary betweenpaid and unpaid work. Only the criticism by feministeconomists on the gender effects of structural adjust-ment policies has initiated that type of analysis (cf.par. 4.4.3).

Mostly, the economic policies indicatedabove are discussed with a view to stimulatingaggregate demand, economic growth andemployment, or because of the inherent positiveeffects of such public services as education, healthand the like. In addition, specific labour marketpolicies are directly aimed at combatingunemployment (e.g. Langmore and Quiggin (1994),Ch.8 and 10 respectively). Only very seldom do suchpolicies also explicitly intend to influence the worldof unpaid work; the obvious example being childca-re.22

22One could also think of subsidies to NGO's thatorganize voluntary services, or tax exemptions forallowances received for 'unpaid' work. An interestingexample is a recently announced measure of the

In other words, the boundaries of paid andunpaid work are influenced by market forces deter-mining the range of the private service sector and bypolitical and budgetary factors determining the rangeof the public service sector. The choice between paidand unpaid work and profitability/political feasibilityof social servicing are two sides of the same coin.The way public policies are affecting this choice isthe focus of this section.

TWO TYPES OF PUBLIC POLICIES WITHRESPECT TO UNPAID WORK

In the literature there are only scattered remarks onthe relevance of public policies for unpaid work.These policies can be divided into two groups:

• Specific or direct policies are explicitly aimed atunpaid work. They might be recognizing it ormaking it more visible; influencing the quantityof unpaid work done in society or changing thedistribution of unpaid work among differentgroups in society.

• Indirect or 'mainstreamed' policies are notdesigned and implemented with a view toaffecting unpaid work as a primary policyobjective, but they have implicit effects onunpaid work. Sometimes influencing unpaidwork is included as an explicit secondary objec-tive of a policy. Mostly, however, mainstreamsocio-economic policies have implicit effects onunpaid work.

In the following paragraphs of this sectionthese two types of policy-making with respect to Netherlands government to subsidize firms that offer'home services' such as cleaning and maintenancework. The stated policy goals of this measure are notonly combating both unemployment and moon-lighting, but also supporting the two-career familyand the elderly to carry out their domestic drudgery(Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment, 1997).


unpaid work will be discussed including making aninventory of different concrete measures and takingstock of some theoretical and research findings thatseem relevant. Very soon it will become clear thatthis sort of data are very difficult to find and thatcoherent research and analysis in this field havehardly begun.

SPECIFIC POLICIES ON UNPAID WORK

The three sections that follow will discuss variousmeasures aimed at better recognizing or 'makingvisible' unpaid work, unpaid work as a policy targetin gender equality policy and government measuresto stimulate voluntary community work.

Making unpaid work visibleBoosting the recognition of unpaid work has

always been cited as the first aim of any policy-making in this field. The most obvious and simplemeasures are data collection, presentation and analy-sis. Time use studies seem to be the most enlighte-ning research for this purpose. Much has still to bedone regarding its further refinement, its internationalcomparability and its use in all regions. Nationalstatistical offices, and behind them the governmentministries responsible for their budgets, have thecentral role to play in this respect.

Other types of research and analysis couldalso contribute to making unpaid work more visible.Much has been written about subsistence productionin developing countries and many studies on(women's) housework, mainly in industrialized coun-tries, have been published.23 Much less is known ofvoluntary community work and of the role of men.24

23The classic examples are Boserup (1970) andOakley (1974).

24'Universality' is mentioned as the first of a list ofevaluation criteria for unpaid work policies proposedby Status of Women Canada (1995) in a paperwritten for the OECD Working Party on the Role ofWomen in the Economy. 'Policies should be based onthe recognition that unpaid work is undertaken bywomen and men, both in and out of the paid labourforce. The implications of recognizing only theunpaid work done by selected groups in society, forexample full-time homemakers, require carefulscrutiny' (Status of Women Canada, 1995, p.7).

A second step in making visible theimportance of unpaid work for society as a whole isimputing its value in monetary terms. Imputing amonetary value for unpaid work is a necessary condi-tion for its inclusion in national accounts or satelliteaccounts and in the models used for economic policy-making (Bruyn-Hundt, 1996, Ch.7; Ironmonger,1995, Plantenga & Sloep 1995).

A special case of recognizing unpaid work isgiving an allowance or financial compensation for it,in other words paying for it. There is clearly adistinction between paying a reimbursement ofexpenses on the one hand and paying a reasonablehourly wage on the other. The first is of specialimportance in supporting voluntary community work;it is more a compensation for costs, e.g. for transportor utensils used, rather than a remuneration.Nevertheless it would help to give a feeling of beingrecognized as a community worker. The second, awage for unpaid work, sounds like a contradictio interminis. Above, I explored the debate on wages forhousework and rejected such a policy because itwould not contribute to making the distribution ofunpaid work between men and women fairer andwould not be effective in guaranteeing women'seconomic independence.25 In principle, implemen-tation of wages for housework (and paying for otherforms of now unpaid work) would mean transferringsome productive activities from the unpaid sector tothe paid labour market. Alain Supiot (1996) criticizedbringing unpaid work within the scope of paidemployment, precisely because 'the result would beto eliminate such work, to deny its intrinsic distincti-veness'26. He argues that 'any socially useful work

25Cf the criteria autonomy, choice, and genderequality mentioned in the Canadian paper quoted innote 25.

26 Supiot, 1996, p.611-612. In Supiot's view unpaidwork is 'not performed under contract, but by virtueof a set of rules governing a person's position insociety' (p.611). This vision obscures the fact thatunpaid work is not only done by e.g. housewives andthe unemployed, but in various forms and quantitiesby everyone. By ignoring the universality criterion,mentioned in footnote 25, the author supposes ahypothetical 'intrinsic distinctiveness', that - in myview - can only lead to a biased view of unpaid work.As indicated before, unpaid work is not unpaidbecause of some inherent trait of the work itself. All

17 Policies with respect to unpaid work

should (...) be underpinned by a coherent set oflabour rights and a legal status that would recognizeit as being part of a normal working life withoutdetriment to its distinctiveness' (Supiot, 1996, p.612). It is unclear whether he envisions a separate setof labour rights for unpaid workers, different fromthe rights of the gainfully employed, or identicallabour rights. Identical labour rights, withoutintroducing any form of direct wage payment, do notmake much sense. Special labour rights of unpaidworkers could come into conflict with privacy rightsand the optional character of unpaid work.

The more generic idea of a basic income forall adult citizens could also contribute to some formof recognition of unpaid work. However, as suchpolicy proposals are mostly discussed in the contextof reforming employment and welfare policies, thisbasic income strategy should be classified as anindirect policy approach vis à vis unpaid labour.

Another variety of the plea for 'recognizing'unpaid work can be heard in the debate among femi-nist jurists on the ethics of care and the inclusion ofcare as a fundamental right in the constitution and/orin other legal texts. Many participants in that debateseem to fall into the same trap met in the wages forhousework debate and in the plea for a 'legal status'for unpaid work. They tend to highlight care as afeminine value. By requesting recognition for thatvalue they contribute to entrenching instead of loos-ening the existing male and female role models.27

These debates disclose an important dilemma: themodalities chosen in recognizing unpaid work shouldbe weighed against policy goals in other areas,especially against the goals of gender equality policy.Recognizing unpaid work as such without asking:'what for ?' does not seem a fruitful strategy.

In conclusion, many proposed strategies forbetter recognition of unpaid work are linked to theuneven distribution of paid and unpaid work amongdifferent groups in society. As a consequence of this

types of work can be paid or unpaid, depending onthe social context and the topical economicconditions.

27Marjolein van den Brink a.o. eds.(1997) reflect thisdebate in the Netherlands.

uneven distribution, some groups lack purchasingpower and economic independence. The drive forbetter recognition of unpaid work can be interpretedas an attempt to compensate for these unequal powerrelations, without repairing the original imbalance. Ina hypothetical world where unpaid work was moreevenly distributed and did not form a barrier to reacha reasonable level of gainful employment, therewould be less need for this recognition. Everybodywould do his/her own unpaid work as a normal aspectof life that would not demand a special recognition.

Unpaid work and gender equality policyModern gender equality policy-making in

the field of work and employment is based on the as-sumption that women's empowerment requires theireconomic independence and relief of domesticdrudgery. In principle, four types of policy reformsare relevant here:28

(i) Promoting a more equal sharing of unpaidwork between women and men;

(ii) Introducing changes in the organisation ofpaid employment, in order to facilitate theindividual combination of paid and unpaidwork both by women and by men;

(iii) The provision of public services, such aschild care etc.;

(iv) The commercialisation of domestic labour.

Paths (i), (ii), and (iii) are now accepted ele-ments of policy-making for women's equality, at leastin theory. Path (iv) is much less discussed. Thesedifferent policy directions will be reviewed, all be itin very broad outline. The purpose of this exercise isnot to make a detailed evaluation of gender equalitypolicies, but to determine how these policies fit intothe broader framework of unpaid work policies.

Equal sharing Direct State interventionsto persuade men to accept an equal share of unpaidwork are relatively rare. The intra-family allocationof work is no matter for the mounted police. Mostgovernment policy-making in this area relies onround-about ('soft') measures such as education and

28Bittman (1996); see also OECD (1991) and the UNdocuments referred to in Ch. 3 of this paper.


information. As a consequence, the 'bargaining at thekitchen table' takes place on an individual basis. Anadditional disadvantage of this strategy is thepresupposed presence of someone with whom toshare your household chores. Lone mothers andsingles of all ages and sexes lack such a 'sharingpartner'.

The tendency of past decades towards moresharing of unpaid work - decreased for women andincreased for men, but less than proportionally (seea.o. UN 1995(b), Ch. 5) - seems primarily related tothe increased labour force participation of womenand the increased (at least verbal) support of thevalue of sex equality. Whether a 'stalled revolution'(Hochschild) or a 'lagged adaptation' (Gershuny),these processes form a dangerous target for directgovernment measures.

Re-arranging paid work Much morepublic support may be expected for measures bygovernments, business and the trade unions to changethe organisation of paid work in a so-called family-friendly way. Treatises on policies to balance workand family can now even be found in a collegetextbook - albeit a feminist one! (Blau, Ferber andWinkler, 1998, Ch. 10). Forms of maternity andparental leave and leave to care for sick dependantsare much less controversial than the issue of workingtime. While most experts would agree that a generalreduction of daily or weekly working hours would bethe most effective measure, such a policy receivesweak though growing support. That leaves'flexibility' as a magic means. There are many indica-tions, however, that part-time work functions more asa trap than as a bridge, because it does not relievewomen of their prime responsibility for unpaidfamily work and does not bring them enough earningcapacity to guarantee their economic independence.(OECD (1994), Ch.3; Baxter and Gibson (1990);Bittman (1996)).

With the exception of maternity leave, thepolicies mentioned under (i) and (ii) seem to have atypical bias related to industrialized countries; theyare seldom seen as very relevant for developingcountries, be it for cultural or economic reasons(Bullock (1994), p.21; UN (1995b) p.69).

Public services The domestic labourdebate pursued by leftist academics and activists inthe seventies produced various treatises on thesocialization or collectivization of unpaid work,

especially of housework and caring tasks. Theutopian tendency of most proposals on communalliving arrangements and so on made them lookobsolete when individualization and privatizationtriumphed in the eighties. This runs the risk ofthrowing out the baby with the bathwater.

Palmer, Elson and other scholarsconcentrating on development issues havehighlighted the importance of publicly financedinfrastructure (roads, transport, water facilities etc.)which contributes to raising the productivity ofwomen's unpaid work in fetching the essentials of life(water, fuel, food etc.) and social services (health,education etc.) which diminish the burden of caringtasks on women (See UNRISD, 1997; Kerr, 1994).Far from being the illusion of old-fashioned leftists,state investment in infrastructure and public servicesis essential for relieving women of their doubleburden and supporting a reallocation of unpaid workbetween women and men.

Infrastructural investments and publicexpenditures for social services will in most cases beimplemented in the course of general developmentpolicies, not so much specifically to lessen women'sunpaid work. Child care facilities29, however, seemin most cases primarily motivated by the wish to help(both) parents to perform their caring responsibilitiesin such a way that they are able to take up paid workoutside their home. A related group of policymeasures consists of forms of income support forcaring work, such as child allowances or mother'sallowances. These imply that the income support isrestricted to the caring parent who is not in (orleaves) the labour market (Bradbury, 1995). Such a'home carer's allowance' - if paid only to a nonemployed parent - clearly discriminates against thoseparents who choose to stay in the labour market andtherefore conflicts with economic independence as astated aim of gender equality policy.

Commercialization of unpaid work Afourth component of gender equality policy aimed atrelieving women's domestic drudgery would beencouraging private businesses producing goods and 29Although childcare facilities may be privatelyorganized, they are (semi-) public services as long asthey are at least partly financed from the publicbudget, be it directly by state expenditures orindirectly by tax deductions.


services which are good substitutes for unpaid work,or reduce the time necessary to spend in it. To acertain extent, these market alternatives developspontaneously, as the growth of the market for so-called consumer durables and for fast food productsmakes clear. On the other hand, Governments seldomconsider how to stimulate market developments ofthis kind, e.g. by lowering the value-added tax (VAT)on these products (Bruyn-Hundt, p. 182). Such apolicy approach would also have to comprise taxdeductions or transfers (subsidies) to trades like laun-dries, cleaning services, repair and maintenance etc.,and other stimulating measures such as vocationaltraining and a flexible business licensing policy. Taxdeductions or an income tax credit for people whocombine unpaid work with paid work could stimulate(or reward) the substitution of unpaid work by marketgoods and services.

Economic policies vis à vis the privatesector seem only by coincidence to be motivated bypolicy goals as described in this section. In mostcases other policy goals (stimulating economicgrowth, combating unemployment, levelling incomedistribution) seem to dominate – a reason why suchpolicies would have to be put in the category ofindirect measures.30

Policies with regard to voluntary co-mmunity work A third group of policiesspecifically aimed at influencing unpaid work con-sists of measures relating to voluntary communitywork (i.e. work for the sake of others or for society atlarge, undertaken optionally, without pay, in anorganized setting). Informal care on a more privatebasis, such as care for dependants, relatives orneighbours, is mostly not covered by this concept. In

30As an exception I found for the Netherlands anadvisory report of the Social and Economic Council,holding the plea that private services become a moreregular part of the market sector and a parliamentaryrequest for a investigation into the possibilities ofgovernment measures in that respect (Niphuis-Nell(1977), p.295 and 322). Moreover, the Netherlandsgovernment has announced the introduction of wagesubsidies for 'home services' (see note 23). In theEuropean Union recently a discussion has started onlowering the VAT for labour-intensive businesses.

particular, informal care for the elderly when outsideone's own home, tends to fall between the cracks.

However defined, voluntary communitywork is the essence of civil society. A country wherevoluntary community work has no place could not becalled a democracy.

Some voluntary work, such as activities inpolitical parties, trade unions and other non-governmental organizations, can easily be, andmostly is, combined with paid employment. Othertypes of voluntary work, such as many caring tasks,demand such continuous and time-consuming effort,that such a combination is very difficult. Policy-making aiming at this second type of voluntary workmust therefore answer the question where the incomesupport of the volunteers should come from. Mostly,this question is neglected or implicitly answered bysupposing that such volunteers are dependent familymembers, mostly 'non-working' women, or retiredpeople with an income based on their former employ-ment.

In so far as governments want to activatetheir citizens to participate in voluntary work - tostrengthen the fabric of society as such or to betterintegrate citizens outside the labour market - theycould in principle follow two lines of action:(i) Stimulate and support the volunteers; and/or(ii) Support the organisations with which the

volunteers work.

(i) Stimulating and supporting the volunteersExamples of this first group of policy

measures are tax exemptions for the reimbursementsof expenses received by the volunteers. Paying thevolunteers directly is another possibility. Forinstance, Langmore & Quiggin, (p.217) argue forextending child care allowances to those who have a'full-time job' caring for disabled or elderly familymembers or to volunteers with community serviceswho are contributing much of their time to sociallyuseful activities.

Richard Freeman (1996) has found that forthe most part volunteers are people with higherpotential earning or greater demands on their time. -Standard labor supply substitution behaviour, whichpredicts that people will volunteer less whenopportunity costs of time (wages) are higher, explains


only a minor part of differences in volunteerbehaviour. Many people volunteer only in responseto a request to do so. This suggests, says Freeman,that volunteering is a 'conscience good or activity'-something people feel morally obliged to do whenasked, but which they would just as soon leave tosomeone else.

If this finding has validity, then refinedcampaign strategies mobilizing this conscience -comparable with fundraising for public or privatecharities - deserve more attention.

Another form of promoting unpaid workconsists in activating special categories of the popu-lation, e.g. immigrants, older citizens or theunemployed. Pahl (1987) has illustrated the so-calledMatthew Effect: those in employment are bestsituated to finding more work, formal or informal.Gainful work brings them not only the necessarysocial contacts but also the money to buy tools andmaterials, or finance other work-related expenses.

Encouraging unpaid work for the long-timeunemployed therefore entails the question of basicincome support. Such a policy is often directed at thereintegration of the unemployed into paid employ-ment. In that case (voluntary) community work is notencouraged for its own sake, but as a stepping stoneto 'a real job'.

(ii) Supporting the organisations with which thevolunteers work

Governments could pursue a policy offacilitating and supporting private organisations. Taxexemptions or subsidies to these organisations, finan-cing training courses or sectorial measures tostimulate voluntary activities in sports clubs, firebrigades, social work etc. are all possibilities.

Service exchanges - where people couldswap their unpaid services with each other by meansof vouchers - are another way to facilitate unpaidwork (See Offe and Heinze, 1992). Governmentsupport (or tolerance) of these non-money exchanges,however, are destined to remain only a marginalaffair. It is hardly thinkable that any governmentwould knowingly have its tax base eroded in that way(Pixley, 1993, p.200).

Private firms could also promote voluntarywork, e.g. by sponsoring community projects orexchanges of personnel. Schools, sometimes do this.

Some authors advocate a very radicalalternative to stimulating voluntary community work:the introduction of a compulsory social service -taxing the citizens' (unpaid) time rather then theirmoney income (See e.g. Balbo and Novotny, 1986).This alternative is sometimes discussed as a means tocorrect the male bias in military conscription policies.However, compulsory social service as a stateimposed duty misses the character of a freelyassumed obligation, that is essential for the right towork (See a.o. Pixley, Ch. 7). Compulsory socialservice would therefore come into conflict with theprohibition of slavery and forced labour and thehuman right to freely chosen employment.

There is extensive literature on voluntarywork in specific fields, such as health care oreducation. However, with the exception of the debateon 'workfare'-type policies, I found practically noliterature on voluntary work written from a generalsocio-economic policy perspective.31 Compared tothe abundance of work on the unpaid housework andcaring tasks of women and related issues, this is astriking gap. Looking back at the language theSocial Summit devoted to this issue,32 so far policy-making vis à vis voluntary community work is awasteland.

Indirect policies relating to unpaid work

Introduction Indirect (or 'mainstreamed') policiesare not designed and implemented with a view toaffecting unpaid work as a primary policy objective.But they do have effects on unpaid work that aremostly unknown and not accounted for. The implicitinfluence of mainstream socio-economic policies onunpaid work is an unexplored area. References in thescientific literature are scarce, fragmentary and

31Mellor's analysis of the voluntary sector in the UKin the eighties stands out as an exception (Mellor,1985). A recent report of the Netherlands' AdvisoryCouncil for Social Development. (Uitsluitendvrijwillig? Maatschappelijk actief invrijwilligerswerk. Rijswijk, november 1997) was alsoa useful source of information.

32Cf. footnote 20. See Programme of Action, para's65 and 72. Two rather vague paragraphs lacking aclear cut vision that could form a basis for an integralpolicy approach.


difficult to track down. Therefore in this section onlysome indications can be given of the possible linksbetween 'general' policies and unpaid work.

The emphasis on measuring and valuingunpaid work criticized in earlier parts of this paperhas left its mark on policy discussion relating tounpaid work. Some researchers and writers active inthe study of unpaid work seem to think that if allunpaid work were measured and valued, it would - asit were, automatically - be taken into account in theformulation of social and economic policies (e.g.Waring, 1988, p.284). Others stress that all discus-sion on the policy relevance of unpaid work is uselessspeculation as long as unpaid work is not properlydocumented and measured. Both views are flawed.Although measurement and valuation of unpaid workis necessary, it is not a sufficient condition for itsincorporation as a factor in the policy-making pro-cess. What really counts here is insight and politicalwill, helped by some bureaucratic skills. Moreover,some factoring-in of unpaid work could very well beundertaken even in the absence of refined statistics.Sometimes, knowing the existence and the directionof a relationship is more relevant than figures anddigits.

Hilkka Pietilä (1996) has given aninteresting sketch of 'the human economy in toto',made up of the household, cultivation and industrialproduction. Her perspective, however, seems to bemainly an ecological one.

Plantenga and Sloep (1995) have exploredhow to incorporate the effects of government policieson female labour supply in a micro-macro economicmodel. For that purpose they replace the traditionalchoice between leisure and working time by a choicebetween leisure, formal working time and unpaidwork (or in their terminology: 'informal workingtime'). Bruyn-Hundt (1996, p. 140 ff) has gone onestep further and indicated a way to implement unpaidwork in a whole macro-economic model. BothPlantenga and Sloep and Bruyn-Hundt comprise allrelevant policy categories (labour market policies,taxation, social security, but also health care andeducation) in one 'box' and do not distinguishbetween direct measures and indirect effects. Inaddition, these pioneers cannot make clear what is thecontent of these equations. For instance, as long as it

is unknown how much unpaid care capacity isavailable in the family sector, the effects of morestringent policies of discharging a patient afterhospitalization cannot be measured.

Ironmonger (1995) has drafted a model ofthe household economy (defined as 'the system thatproduces and allocates tradeable goods and servicesby using the unpaid labour and capital ofhouseholds') and presented some estimated variablesbased on real world data.

This model of the household economy canbe integrated with a complete macro-economic modelof the economy. The eventual model will depict the'total' economy with 'household industries' juxtaposedto market industries. Analyses of the effect of publicpolicy measures on unpaid work that make use ofsuch a model have yet to be published.

Since the development of approaches anddata necessary for the incorporation of unpaid workin economic policy models is still in its infancy,consideration of the policy implications of unpaidwork will be indicative and descriptive.

Wage and income policy Wage and incomepolicies implicitly touch unpaid work mainly in tworespects: (i) Wage setting policies may suppose acertain division of paid and unpaid work in thehousehold, as is the case with the family wage; (ii)Income policies may differ in the extent to whichthey require that the receivers of income are willingto accept an offered job in return. The basic incomeapproach does not entail such a work requirement.

The family wageA well known indirect way of recognizing

unpaid work is granting to the male breadwin-ner/head of the household a (minimum) wage levelthat is supposed to include some 'reward' for hiswife's unpaid household work and a compensation forthe fact that he has to support his 'non-earning' wife.In that case, wage is seen as a family wage.

It could also be said instead that such devi-ces are a way of not recognizing the wife's unpaidwork. When the breadwinners' statutory wage level ishigher than that of his colleague who is single, theimplication is that a 'non-working' wife is a netburden to the family. In other words: what she costs


(livelihood) is higher than what she brings in (in kindproduction of goods and services; economies ofscale). Needless to say calculations of the value ofhousework do not support such a view (Bruyn-Hundt,1996, Ch. 6). The practical relevance of this kind ofreasoning is not great anymore, as the equal payphilosophy has done away with this type of explicitwage differentiation and introduced a general (mini-mum) wage setting instead. The philosophy is stillrelevant in social security and welfare, however,where different household types are allocated diffe-rent rights.

Another mechanism in which differentiationbetween various household types is built-in is theincome tax.

A basic incomeBasic income strategies - often under

different labels and in different technical forms, suchas a guaranteed income or negative income tax33 - areadvocated from a variety of perspectives (See, a.o.Van Parijs, 1992).

Recognizing and rewarding unpaid work isone of the motives directly relevant for ourdiscussion. Mostly, however, a basic income issupported as a remedy against the problems of sur-veillance and control in the implementation of socialsecurity and welfare regulations. Moreover, suchproposals are often guided by such policy goals asreducing the number of the people counted as lookingfor paid work and offering an alternative for theunemployed. In such schemes stimulating 'workbeyond employment' is the necessary counterpart ofwelfare reform.

The Australian sociologist Jocelyn Pixleyhas convincingly debunked this 'post-industrial'strategy as a utopian dream that overestimates thebenevolence of the state. No state will be prepared togive its individual citizens a lifelong guaranteedincome at a socially acceptable level enabling themreally to choose whether to take up paid work or not.

33A negative income tax will diminish if otherindependent income is brought in; a basic incomedoes not: it is an individual income (Bruyn-Hundt,p.168). A common feature, however, is that this statebenefit is allocated without the recipient being forcedto actively seek paid work and accept any suitable jobavailable.

Only an income guarantee at a minimum level orbelow is thinkable. In practice, projects based on thisphilosophy have only further marginalized the unem-ployed.

Moreover, accepting a split between 'work'and a money income seems to have legitimized'work-for-the-dole': in Pixley's words, 'a primitiveform of state conscription or indentured labour'(Pixley, 1993, p.213).

Bruyn-Hundt (1996, p.169) thinks that abasic income would induce a fall in female laboursupply and encourage more women to specialize inunpaid work. As this does not bring them theopportunity to build up their earning capacity, thisstrategy will be detrimental for their economicindependence in the long run. These are essentiallythe same disadvantages as quoted in the wages forhousework discussion reviewed earlier in this paper(par. 2.3). De Beer (1995), however, predicts that abasic income will lead to a change in the distributionof paid work at the micro level. In his view, malebreadwinners will reduce their paid labour time,while their female partners will be stimulated to enterthe labour market. These effects would result in aslight increase in the number of people in the labourforce, but in a decrease in aggregate hours. (To whatextent this change in the distribution of paid workwould influence the distribution of unpaid work is anelement not included in this model).

The difference between these two predic-tions is caused by different labour supply elasticitiesused in the simulation models. In my view, thevalidity of these exercises is limited. Major systemchanges like the introduction of a basic income arevery difficult to incorporate in such models.

Many researchers agree that a greatdisadvantage of a basic income - at least in its mini-mal version - would be its negative effect on laboursupply, especially for women with a working partner.The basic income strategy therefore conflicts witheconomic independence and equal sharing of paidand unpaid work as stated aims of gender equalitypolicy (cf. Jansweijer, 1997).

Employment and labour market policiesMainstream reflections on employment and labourmarket policies usually ignore unpaid work. In thissection, three of these often neglected subjects areconsidered:


• employment policies, especially job creation,and its antithesis, public sector budget cuts in theframework of structural adjustment policies;

• labour market policies and the hiddenunemployed, including 'work-fare';

• allowing for unpaid work in human resourcemanagement.

Employment policiesWhere governments pursue a policy of

direct job creation via the public budget in most casesthe first aim is countering unemployment. Sometimesa secondary aim - or an unintended effect - of suchmeasures is that tasks that were previously unpaidwill be performed at a professional basis. Examplesare informal care of children and the elderly, sometypes of community services such as surveillance andpolice work, or some functions in recreation. Theunemployed who are hired for these new jobs willgenerally not be the same persons as those who didsuch work unpaid before, be it only because the latterdo not all qualify as 'unemployed' in the prevailinglegal sense.

So the side effect of job creation for onegroup of the population may entail 'job' destructionfor others, i.e. decreasing opportunities for domesticor voluntary work. The extent of these impliciteffects would depend on the type of unpaid work lost.An expansion of professional childcare might be ablessing for stressed working parents, but an invasionof professional workers in the animal shelter or at thelocal sports club may deprive some senior citizens ofa way to give sense to their lives.

In the discussion on integrating unpaid workin national accounts and in GNP, it has often beenobserved that a measured amount of economicgrowth or a measured increase in the labour forcemay give a distorted picture, because the unpaid workforegone is not counted.

Moreover, government policies to stimulateeconomic growth and employment could havedifferent implications for unpaid work depending onwhich sector of the economy or which industries theyconcentrate. Emphasis on public facilities,infrastructure and housing will strongly influence theproductivity of unpaid work, as will affordableconsumer durables. Government support for the

development of small-scale firms and private servicedelivery would be a stimulus for substituting unpaidhousehold and maintenance work with paid services.These questions do not seem to have been studied.

Government budget changes in the oppositedirection are more commonly scrutinized for theireffects on unpaid work. Where governments, formacro-economic reasons, contract the public budget,this has the implicit effect of shifting work previouslyin public services to the unpaid sector of the eco-nomy.

Structural adjustment programmes havebeen criticized heavily for overlooking this effect (cf.Bakker, 1994; Connelly, 1996; Elson, 1994 and1995a; Kerr, 1994). The feminist experts working inthe area of development policies have madeabundantly clear how such policies implicitly callupon women to fill the gaps in social servicing withtheir unpaid labour. Structural adjustment policiessuppose an unlimited supply of female domesticlabour - 'able to stretch so as to make up for anyshortfall in incomes and resources required for theproduction and maintenance of human resources'(Elson, 1995c, p.179).

In reality, of course, that supply is notinfinitely elastic, and therefore such policies in manycases have resulted in a deterioration of health andeducational levels. This also makes the claimed effi-ciency gains doubtful: 'What is regarded by econo-mists as increased efficiency may instead be ashifting of costs from the paid economy to the unpaideconomy' (ibid., p.178).

There does not seem to have been anyresearch on the question of how structural adjustmentpolicies affect the unpaid work of men. In a recentoverview of case studies, Elson concludes however,that 'there is strong evidence that unpaid domesticwork has remained an almost exclusively femaletask.' (Elson, 1995b, p.237)

It must be emphasized that these (implicit)effects of major changes in economic structures andpolicies are not only relevant for developing nationsbut also in the industrialized countries and in coun-tries in transition. However, they have been givenmuch less attention there (See a.o. Bakker, 1994).34

34Nona Glazer has published a study of


In conclusion, to establish the side-effects ofemployment policies on unpaid work both the inputand the output side should be taken into account: (1)the unpaid work abandoned (or not) by those whowill be the newly employed; (2) previously unpaidwork now replaced by the goods produced and theservices delivered by the newly employed.

In case of adjustment policies, budget cutsetc. the same - but now oppositely phrased -reasoning should lead to examining (1) some workersloosing their jobs and therefore - to varying degrees -more 'inclined' to unpaid work; (2) the production ofsome goods and services being shifted to the unpaidsector.

Labour market policiesLabour market policies can have an

important indirect effect on unpaid work and itsdistribution between different groups in society. Themain question in this respect is to what extentgovernments are prepared to include the hiddenunemployed in their general policy designs. Asindicated above, the reservoir of job seekers is alwaysgreater than the group registered as such. A largeproportion is left out because they do not fit in thedefinition of unemployment: mainly subsistenceworkers and full-time housewives, but also somerecipients of disability and early retirement pensions.

Many studies are written about specialpolicies for specific groups in the labour market andmany governments implement such specific policyprogrammes. But very little is known of the indirecteffects of mainstream labour market policies on thechances of the hidden unemployed (women andmen). In as far as these groups are left out and do notqualify for participation in work programmes,training schemes etc., governments apparently thinkthat their citizens who fill their days with unpaidwork and/or leisure activities do so following agenuine, personal choice and do not care for paid

'worktransfer', i.e. shifts in tasks from paid workers tounpaid consumers/family members, resulting fromrationalization strategies both in private retailingshops and in public health care institutions in the US.(Nona Y. Glazer, Women's Paid and Unpaid Labor:The Work Transfer in Health Care and Retailing.Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993).

work and all that it represents in terms of (self)es-teem, fulfilment, power and independence.

Policy programmes of the 'workfare' typeare a case in point: where jobs (or trainingopportunities) are offered or imposed as a conditionof receiving - or instead of - unemployment benefitsor welfare, those unemployed without such a benefitwill not qualify. And even if these groups didformally qualify, it would remain to be seen whetherthe designers of these policy programmes would havetaken into account the specific situation of clientswith a heavy unpaid workload. In the huge literatureon labour market policies and 'workfare' there are noapparent references to this question.

Concluding this section, one additionalremark must be made. 'Workfare' could under certainconditions be seen as a form of unpaid work, in thesense that work is performed without a fair wage ascompensation. 'Work-for-the-dole' is heavilycriticized - not only for its ineffectiveness inproviding the participants with better opportunities toget a real job (King, 1995), but also as an infringe-ment of state obligation to guarantee the civil right tofreely chosen employment (Langmore and Quiggin,p.160; Pixley, Ch.7). Others, such as Standing, haveadded that workfare contributes to 'eroding theuniversal right to income support' and 'represents amovement away from national insurance principlesof social security' (Standing, 1990, p. 689). 'Work-fare' can only be an acceptable strategy if it offers thepossibility of a real job at reasonable wages to allcitizens looking for paid work. Otherwise it willeasily become not so much a form of unpaid workbut rather - together with compulsory social service -a form of state conscription.

Human resources managementSchools, vocational training institutes,

private companies and public employers are someti-mes asked to take into account the unpaid work expe-rience of their applicants.

Two types of arguments are used. First, it issaid that women re-entering the labour market after aperiod of full-time housewifery have built up greatexperience as managers of the family ('a small firm'),that can be of use in many occupations and functions.Secondly, applicants can say that their experience involuntary community work does qualify them forrelated functions in paid employment.


The first argument, though perhaps true inmany cases, is difficult to sustain. These managementskills are hard to check; allowing for a housewife'scredit in personnel policies would then become adisguised - and therefore controversial - form of affir-mative action. A more honest strategy would be toeliminate the gender bias implicit in traditional jobevaluation schemes that undervalue organisationaland social skills typically held by women in contrastto the manual and technical skills held by men(OECD, 1991, p.19).

The second argument - allowing forvolunteer experience - makes more sense. Many jobsin new sectors, such as in information technology orin professionalized social action (public affairs, lob-bying, advocacy etc.) are fulfilled by people wholearned their trades pursuing their hobbies or as avolunteer. Their self-taught skills may indeed beeasily transferable to the world of paid employment.In these cases, unpaid work would be an appropriatestepping stone to a paid job. This mechanismdeserves more support in implementing policies to re-integrate the long-term unemployed in the labourmarket.

TaxationThe implicit effects of tax systems on

unpaid work are threefold:• Income tax is levied on money income only;• Most income tax systems feature a gender bias;• Commodity taxes can influence the efficiency of

unpaid work or the substitution of unpaid workby purchased products or services.

• No tax on unpaid workIncome tax systems generally do not tax

households for the welfare they enjoy from theirunpaid production of goods and services for theirown consumption. As an OECD study published in1975 has pointed out, this 'imposes a bias favoringunpaid work in the home compared with paid work inthe labour force'.35 The same is true for unpaid work

35M. Darling (1975), The Role of Women in theEconomy. Paris: OECD, p. 91; cited in Bruyn-Hundt(1996), p. 178.

performed outside the home, be it for one's ownhousehold or for others.

A justification for only levying income taxon money income may be that the imputed incomeinherent in in kind production of goods and servicesis bound to that particular production. It cannot besaved and used to purchase other goods and services.(The same argument is sometimes used in thediscussion on the incorporation of unpaid work innational accounts. See: Bruyn Hundt, p.76). In otherwords, income from unpaid work gives less consu-mer sovereignty than does monetary income.

The service exchanges set up in the world of'alternative work', where the volunteering participants'sell' their services not for money but for vouchers(cf. par. 4.3.3 above), can be interpreted as a smartway to overcome this disadvantage. But if the vou-chers issued by these exchanges were to be used on alarge scale as quasi-money, the tax authorities wouldcertainly not keep silent.

Some authors have proposed to correct thebias favoring unpaid work by introducing a tax leviedon a fictitious earned income.36 A more realisticstrategy to correct this bias is incorporating in theincome tax system some form of tax exemption ordeduction for people who perform (full-time) paidemployment and therefore have less time to do alltheir household and caring work themselves. Thiswould be of special importance for the costs of childcare.

• Gender bias in tax systemsGender bias in tax systems concerning paid

work very often implies a disincentive for (married)women to enter or stay in the paid labour force andtherefore influences the allocation of unpaid work.Gender bias in the personal income tax may occur indifferent forms. In her useful overview, written forthe International Monetary Fund, Janet Stotskydistinguishes between explicit and implicit forms ofgender bias under two different tax regimes, 36E.g. Cuvellier (1979, 1993) proposed that ahousewife should pay income tax and social securitycontributions on a fictitious income equivalent to halfof her husband's earnings. Cf. the critique by MaryWilkinson (1996).


respectively joint and individual filing of the taxform.

The most obvious gender bias is theprogressive marginal tax rate that discourages thepaid employment of secondary workers in a systemof joint filing where the incomes earned by thespouses are added. Other forms of gender bias are tobe found, inter alia, in the allocation of exemptions,deductions and other tax preferences and in theallocation of non-labour or business income. The so-called 'marriage penalty', i.e. the higher taxes aworking couple has to pay after they marry, works inparticular as a disincentive to the participation ofwomen: labour supply elasticity of married women isgreater than that of men and single women. This wellestablished fact37 of a gender difference in laboursupply elasticities is linked to many related factors,such as the availability and the prices of facilities likechild care and parental leave, determining netbenefits of market work, and to other factors, such asthe local institutional settings and the prevailingnorms and values. In other words, the effects of taxsystem (dis)incentives on labour market behaviour -and therefore on the allocation of unpaid work -should not be studied in isolation but as part of awider complex.

Taxes on goods and servicesA third component of the tax system's

implicit influence on unpaid work is the regime fortaxes on goods and services, already mentionedabove.

Broad-based consumption taxes, such asvalue-added tax, retail sales taxes and excise taxes,and also foreign trade taxes such as import duties,will indirectly influence unpaid work by their effectson the prices of goods and services that can besubstituted for unpaid work or make unpaid moreefficient: tools and material used in subsistenceagriculture and production in developing countries,consumer durables, or consumer investment goodslike washing machines, do-it-yourself equipment, fastfood and all sorts of 'home services'.

Social security and welfare

37Cf. James (1992)

Three possible ways in which social securityand welfare system may impinge upon unpaid workare:• Direct and indirect gender bias;• Risk cover for unpaid workers;• Regulations concerning unpaid work done by the

recipients of social security and welfare benefits.

• Gender biasGender bias in social security and welfare

tends to confirm women in their 'choice' for unpaidwork and contribute to discouraging them fromentering the labour market. Like the disincentiveeffects of taxation, this discouragement is difficult toisolate as a single factor and seems to work more aspart of a complex of several cultural and institutionalconstraints.

Direct sex discrimination in social securityand welfare is vanishing as it is forbidden by interna-tional law and national legislation in many countries.More complex is indirect discrimination or genderbias38, that largely stems from the initial phase ofsocial security systems, when it made sense toassume a fixed division of gender roles within thefamily. Such indirect gender bias may take severalforms or be given different labels: family-based,means-tested benefit systems, that discourage the'secondary' earner; breadwinner subsidy elements,such as supplementary benefits; a system of 'derivedrights' for the 'dependent' spouse; credit-sharingarrangements, e.g. in pension entitlements; differen-tial outcomes of employment-based social securityregulations for male and female workers, given theoften shorter employment history and lower earningcapacity of women (Cf. OECD, 1985, Ch.VI).

Indirect gender bias in social security andwelfare finds its origin in the unequal allocation ofpaid work among men and women, and therefore stillhas some justification. Conflicting policyconsiderations also seem to play a role here. On theone hand policy-makers in the past have tried to dojustice to existing patterns of allocation of paid andunpaid work and protect the weaker party. On the 38 According to now accepted legal doctrine suchgender bias would not qualify as indirect sexdiscrimination in as far as the differential effect of theregulation under consideration has an objectivejustification.


other hand, in doing so, they have - intentionally orunintentionally - built barriers to change. Thisparadox - well known to experts in the field of genderequality policy - is one of the most difficult problemsthat future social security and welfare reform has tosolve. Of course, social security will have to enhancewomen's economic independence, but to what extentshould it also allow for extra protection for women,especially for older women, in as far as they have nothad the opportunity to fully realize that economicindependence? 'Or is such protection assumingdependency and stimulating women to continue toopt for dependency?' (Sjerps, 1996, p.9).

The paradox inherent in assuming femaledependency is hardly challenged in recentinternational social security discussions. Manyauthors in mainstream literature still seem to take thatdependency for granted (See e.g. Maydell, 1994,p.505).39

• Risk cover for unpaid workersIn countries where social security

entitlements, in particular covering disability and oldage, are not linked to citizenship but to employment,risk coverage of non-employed people is problematic.Partial solutions may be found in systems of derivedrights, such as survivors' benefits, with the built-ingender bias mentioned above. In addition, some em-ployment-based social security regulations give creditfor specific periods that the insured worker has beenout of the labour market to fulfil his or her (mostlythe latter) child-rearing responsibility. A safety netprovision, such as a state welfare or universal pensionsystem at a minimum level, may or may not be inplace. This complex issue is only briefly mentionedhere; a more detailed treatment is beyond the scopeof this paper (See e.g. OECD, 1985).

The issue is not only how social securityarrangements provide for people who drop out of thelabour market to care for children (maternity or

39 An exception is an Australian analysis of socialsecurity reform that has progressively removed theassumption of female dependency on the malebreadwinner from the income support system andreplaced it with stimulation of economic independencethrough paid employment (Briggs and Bond, 1995).

parental benefits, child allowances and tax rebates). Italso relates to the position of those how give (full-time) care to elderly or disabled relatives or performthe same sort of caring work as voluntary communityworkers. Should cash payment be put in place? (cf.Hoskins, 1996, p. 49). What regulations do cover therisks of sickness, disability, accident and injury ofthese unpaid workers?40

• Unpaid work by recipients of social securityand welfare benefits

As a rule, social security and welfare lawforbid not only irregular paid work but also volunteerwork: the unemployed are supposed to spend theirtime by finding a job, not by doing unpaid work. Thecontinuing high unemployment, in particular in theindustrialized countries, has undermined this rule.This is partly caused by pressure from the unem-ployed themselves - who want to spend their time ina meaningful way or see the sense of doing volunteerwork and so enlarging their work experience.Moreover, policy makers have redefined the policyissue of the burden of unemployment benefits from asocial security to a labour market matter: activatingthe unemployed is now considered the first step totheir reintegration into the labour market.

In this way, unpaid work is given arecognized place in so-called 'activating labourmarket policies'. This recognition can take variousforms: from passively permitting unpaid activitiesunder certain conditions and in individual cases, toactively offering volunteer work opportunities tospecific target groups; from organizing new 'workprojects' and making participation a condition forreceiving benefits ('workfare'), to benefit transfer, i.e.

40The OECD-publication mentioned before proposesa solution for this problem that boils down to makingthis unpaid work paid. ' ...(A)llowances for theelderly and disabled should be sufficient to enablethem to purchase care and relatives should be eligibleto act as paid care-givers. Under such a system, thecaring relative would be able to maintain socialsecurity coverage for pensions and other benefits inthe same way as any other employed person' (OECD,1985, p.143).


using the benefit money to subsidize newly createdjobs for the unemployed.

Governments and social security authoritieshave to make difficult judgements in this context inorder to find a balance between free choice andobligation towards the community. Would the long-term goal of economic independence for all womenbe enough justification for pressuring a lone motherreceiving welfare to accept workfare or a subsidizedjob, if the pay she received would barely be enoughto finance day care for her young children, if shefound such care at all? Would preventing 'socialexclusion' be enough justification for 'forcing' a drop-out - very busy in (unpaid) alternative work of hisown making - into 'volunteering' in a work project tolearn 'working habits'?

The answers given to these kinds ofdilemmas will really be indicative of the public orpolitical recognition the unpaid activities in questionare granted.

Other policy areasThe reality of the huge unpaid contribution

of households to economic value needs to beaccepted; adopted as a benchmark fact, it wouldchange nearly all our deliberations about economicand social policy.' (Ironmonger, 1996, p. 60). Notonly is such an acceptance among policy-makers far

away, we also have only a very primitive insight intothe interplay of non-market production and marketproduction and how that is affected by governmentpolicies.

Various issues in this context deserving datacollection and analysis include: consumption andinvestment choices; the contribution of unpaid labourto human capital formation; the effects of newtechnologies on unpaid work; the effects of thebusiness cycle in shifting work from the paid to theunpaid economy and vice versa; including unpaidwork in the analysis of income distribution;comparative research on the impact of differentsocio-economic policy regimes on gender relationsand family welfare (Bruyn-Hundt, 1996; Plantenga &Sloep, 1995; Forum, 1996).

If policy-makers became aware of all theseeffects and took them into account, unpaid workwould be 'mainstreamed' as a regular element in thepolicy-making process. In so far as policy-makersstill have a blind spot for unpaid work, the possibleimplicit effects would not occur to them. And if theydid occur to them, then the lack of reliable datawould make it very difficult to take these effects intoaccount. Instruments like checklists and impact state-ments may help mainstream unpaid work as a regularfactor in socio-economic policy-making. Techniques,however, can never replace insight and political will.

V. CONCLUSION:UNPAID WORK - WHOSE ISSUE IS IT?

Section I emphasized that there is no inherent trait inunpaid work that makes that work unpaid. All workcan be done both as wage (or self-employed) labourand as unpaid activity: it is the specific historical andlocal context that makes some work paid and otherwork unpaid. Given the variety of activities thatmakes up the rather amorphous concept of unpaidwork, it is important to specify what forms of unpaidwork seem relevant in specific policy discussions.

In fact, this is not always done. As the thirdand fourth Sections have illustrated, different groupsof activists and academics use the concept for theirown purposes; while they speak of 'unpaid work' assuch, they are in fact focusing on specific unpaidactivities by specific parts of the population andadvocating their favourite policy issues.

Women-in-development and some otherdevelopment experts concentrate on the role ofwomen's subsistence labour and domestic productionas an indispensable factor of economic growth andhuman development. Women's empowerment andreform of macro-economic adjustment strategies aretheir prime goals. Gender equality experts (femocratsand NGOs), especially those from industralized coun-tries, focus on women's economic independence andadvocate equal sharing of paid employment andunpaid caring work between women and men. Theylobby for policy reforms that would support suchchange and help eliminating hidden gender bias inexisting regulations. A segment of the women'smovement - those who don't believe in reallocation ofwork - still wants women's housework to be 'recogni-zed', if not financially then statistically. They collidewith statisticians and economists fighting each otherin an arena of their own.

Some welfare experts and advocates for theunemployed - those who don't believe in full employ-ment - are concerned about a legitimate place forvolunteer or alternative work and argue for 'sociallyuseful activities' to be recognized under a broaderconcept of work.

Last but not least, some policy-makers jumpon that bandwagon, pleading for 'workfare' to solve

their problems in financing the burden of socialbenefits and reducing unemployment.

This rough sketch pictures different actorseach claiming the unpaid work issue from theirparticular perspective and for their particular politicalgoal. Looked at in this way, what happened and isstill happening at the UN becomes moreunderstandable. The UN has offered a forum for allthese different groups and tendencies to spread theirviews. But lacking a rallying theory and a sharedbody of knowledge, the result is vague and fragmen-tary. Should each part of the UN concentrate on itsown aspects of the issue? Or would an integratedapproach be possible?

The importance of the issue of unpaid workfrom a gender perspective obviously stands out, but itwouldn't be sensible to leave it at that. The firstargument is that a gender perspective must bemainstreamed in all policy areas, including in socialpolicy. Secondly, however, it is important to realizethat the issue of unpaid work would not 'disappear' ifthe gender aspect could be thought away. Even then acertain part of human needs would still have to bemet by non-market activities. Even in a hypotheticalworld of perfect gender balance unpaid work willhave to be taken into account as a necessary elementof private freedom and as a pillar of civil society andpolitical democracy. Social policy that leaves theunpaid work issue out as if it were 'something else'misses the point.

In addition, even in a world of full employ-ment, people would continue to engage in workoutside the labour market. It is neither feasible nordesirable that all work should be done for the market.

Therefore, unpaid work should further bestudied in all its different forms and should be recog-nized, valued and factored in as a regular element insocio-economic policy-making. Further study on thisissue should have two thrusts:

First, the concept of unpaid work and itsplace in the economy at large deserves more in-depthresearch and analysis. What does that broader pictureof the economy look like and will it be possible to


develop some paradigm of unpaid work thattranscends the diversity of all that different unpaidactivities and the various perspectives of theiradvocates in theory and practice? And what wouldthat mean for mainstream economic theory andmodelling?

Second, the concept of unpaid work should,be put between square brackets and attention focusedon the different sorts of unpaid work. If the threebroad components - subsistence production, domesticwork and voluntary activities - are compared, the last

mentioned category is the most underexposed. Muchhigh-flown philosophy on 'civil society' has not yetyielded concrete insights into questions such as whypeople work 'for nothing' and how their willingnessto do so fluctuates with, for instance, economiccircumstances and government intervention.

Further unravelling the economics ofvoluntary work could essentially contribute to abroader recognition and understanding of work andemployment.

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DESA Discussion Papers

No 1 Public versus Private Provision of Pensions

By Larry Willmore, December 1998

No 2 Inefficiencies of Global Capital Markets

By Hugh Stretton, December 1998

No 3 Greening the National Accounts: Approach and Policy Use

By Peter Bartelmus, January 1999

Documents

Unpaid Work and Policy-Makingmeasuring and imputing the value of unpaid work, the arguments pro and contra the incorporation of unpaid work in the System of National Accounts are discussed