Women’s unpaid domestic services, along with unpaid caregiving services for household and family members, accounted for 14.8 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2021.
This figure is 14 per cent for India, and 15 per cent for Sri Lanka. Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) Director General Binayak Sen presented this data at the second day of Annual BIDS Conference on Development on Friday.
“Women make a significant contribution to social reproduction and economic development through unpaid non-market household and caregiving work, and their contribution through such unpaid work is three times higher than their male counterparts,” Sen says.
In comparison, men’s unpaid domestic services, along with unpaid caregiving services for household and family members, accounted for only 2.8 per cent of the country’s GDP in 2021. The country’s total GDP was $416.3 billion in 2021.
There are three sectors of unpaid work – unpaid domestic services for household and family members, unpaid caregiving services for household and family members, and unpaid productive work for own consumption, Sen mentioned.
He added, “Despite its importance, unpaid care and domestic work is undervalued because it is performed outside market transactions, comprising a so-called “missing market.” The literature terms it as non-market work.
“Unpaid non-market household and care work is clearly work, but there is a lack of consensus as to how to define it.”
He stresses that unpaid caregivers should be prioritised in accessing public health, nutrition, and public social protection programs; better infrastructure and caregiving market and non-market institutions should be in place for unpaid care work, including childcare and elderly care, to reduce women’s unpaid care responsibility and provide them with an opportunity for their economic participation.
Male contribution to the household unpaid care work must be societally encouraged. This will help to ensure the even spread of the care work across gender, ensuring gender equality in unpaid work, he added.
In a study, the South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (SANEM) found that the value of unpaid work of women in the country is worth about 39.52 per cent of GDP.
According to a report in 2019, the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) showed that women do unpaid work 3.5 times more than men. A woman spends on an average 24 hours a week, or about 3.5 hours a day, on doing unpaid household work.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had earlier also asked authorities concerned to include the women’s unpaid domestic work in the GDP from the FY2024-25.
