The utilization of time-use surveys in public policy

Work is usually thought of as a source of income, even wealth, or at least as a way of obtaining the economic sustenance necessary to live, but there is a type of work that impoverishes the person doing it: unpaid work. As is well known, this is done predominantly by women and includes care work, parenting, housework and community or voluntary work. It meets society's care and welfare needs and makes a vital contribution that has nonetheless been denied visibility and even the status of work. While this is still largely the case in academia, official statistics and public politics, there have been substantial improvements; at the conceptual level in particular, there have been huge contributions from feminist economics and sociology, which have transcended their disciplinary boundaries and begun to penetrate into other scientific and political spheres.

Related Subject(s): Economic and Social Development