1GzuFGC

UNPAID CARE AND DOMESTIC WORK: THEFOUNDATION FOR ALL ECONOMIC ACTIVITYUnpaid care and domestic work contributesto human well-being and to overall economicdevelopment through nurturing people who are fit,productive and capable of learning and creativity. 59Unpaid care and domestic work produces andreproduces the labour force on a day-to-daybasis and over generations for the market, butconventional analyses of employment and labourmarkets tend to ignore it altogether (see Box 2.5). 60BOX 2.5Unpaid work: A note on terminologyUnpaid work includes a diverse range of activities that are carried out predominantly by women withoutremuneration. There are three broad categories referred to in this report: 61• Unpaid work in a family business, involving the production of goods or services for sale on themarket for no direct pay, which is referred to as contributing family work• Unpaid work that involves the production of goods for self-consumption (e.g., collecting water orfirewood)• Unpaid work that involves the provision of services for self-consumption (e.g., cooking or cleaning aswell as person-to-person care)This Report uses the concept of unpaid care and domestic work to include the latter two types of work.In addition to person-to-person care (such as feeding a child or bathing a frail elderly person) anddomestic work, this also includes other activities (such as the collection of water or firewood) that arecritical for ‘reproducing’ people on a day-to-day basis, particularly in low-income settings.Despite its enormous value, unpaid care and domestic work remains largely invisible in standardmeasures of the economy (see Chapter 4). While unpaid work in family businesses is routinely included incalculations of gross domestic product (GDP), unpaid care and domestic work, as defined in this report, israrely included in what is known as the System of National Accounts (SNA) production boundary.Although the collection of water and firewood has officially formed part of the SNA productionboundary since 1993, this is rarely followed through in practice. All other unpaid care and domestic workat the household level continues to be referred to in the SNA as a ‘self-contained activity with limitedrepercussions on the rest of the economy’. 62This Report takes a fundamentally different view: that the unpaid provision of services in householdsfor own consumption is a form of work that has immediate repercussions for economies, large andsmall, through its impact on the wider labour force. This perspective is gaining ground: in 2013, theInternational Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLS) agreed some important changes in how workand employment are defined and measured. It was decided that unpaid care and domestic work willnow be categorized as work, which should lead to better measurement and valuation of these activitiesin the future (see Box 2.3). 6383