Rural women ‘spend more time than men in economic activities’

[Naveed Yaseen]

The first-ever nationwide ‘Time Use Survey’ was conducted in Pakistan in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance and the Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS) to report on how people spend their time, says a press release issued by the Strengthening PRS Monitoring Project.

A ‘Time Use Survey’ is a statistical survey and the information acquired by the survey is used to analyse how people allocate their time to various activities such as paid work and unpaid work (e.g. taking care of children and sick people and doing domestic chores).

The survey was initiated by the Gender Responsive Budgeting Initiative project and is currently being completed under the auspices of Strengthening PRS Monitoring project funded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The survey was conducted between January-December 2007, covering 19,600 households nationwide. Pakistan’s first national ‘Time Use Survey’ provides new and valuable information on how Pakistanis spend their time and how patterns of economic and social participation vary between men and women.

The survey findings reveal that one half of the women (50%), compared to one-seventh (14%) of men are unpaid family workers. In broad socio-economic grouping, about one-forth (24%) of men are white collar (senior officials and professionals) workers compared to about one-eight (13%) of women. In contrast 69% women are brown collar (service, agriculture and trade workers) workers compared to about 50% men. Urban men in Pakistan, in contrast to urban women, spend five times more time in economic activities than in para-economic activities such as household maintenance, care for children, sick and elderly and community services. However, rural women spend more time in economic activities, as compared to rural men. Urban men and women spend more time in socio-cultural activities compared to men and women in rural areas.

The survey reveals that the productive life time of Pakistani women is being spent mostly in undertaking household activities highlighting the immense contribution women make not only towards the well being of the household, but also towards subsidising the cost of the economy.

According to the United Nations Statistics Division, sixty-two countries have conducted at least one national or pilot time use survey during 1990-2008. Of the total countries some fifty-two countries have conducted a national ‘Time Use Survey’ either by the statistical or some other agency. Of those, only twelve countries conducted more than one survey (Australia, Canada, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, South Africa, United Kingdom and United States).

The complete survey report is currently being complied and will be launched soon, which will be depicting time spending trends at national and provincial level with rural- urban breakdown. The report in its four sections covers concepts and definitions, survey methodology and information regarding the characteristics of the households along with a detail account of time use patterns in terms of various activities i.e. economic, housekeeping, personal care, leisure, travelling, child care activities etc.

The report contains both a commentary and easy-to-understand graphs that demonstrate specific examples of how time is used. The survey results can help in analysing the gender trends of spending time in care giving and maintaining balance in family and paid work responsibilities. Patterns of time allocation are used to measure the productive value of households, as economic units. The data acquired from the survey can be used for verification of the data provided by standard instruments such as the labour force survey. Furthermore this data can be used for drawing up of satellite accounts as proposed in the System of National Accounts, to find out economic value of unpaid worker and as a source for macroeconomic models. The ‘Time Use Survey’ takes an exhaustive stock of household activities and has generated a wealth of data to provide empirical perspective for research on various social, economic and cultural issues for groups including researchers, planners, academicians, sociologists etc. The information on unremunerated work will be crucial in formulating and implementing socio-economic development plans with gender equality dimension.

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