Women’s earning power, and wellbeing

Although women have as much to offer at work as men do, they generally are unable to play an active role in labor markets because they face many constraints within as well as outside the household. Some of these constraints could be eliminated by government’s policies aiming to make the labor market less discriminatory. Such policies could enhance overall wellbeing in society and would have a more direct impact on enhancing women’s empowerment than actions seeking recognition of unpaid work in official statistics. Women’s unpaid housework may be of critical importance in the determination of household wellbeing, but unfortunately it does not get as much recognition as paid work does. In order to get such recognition, many recent studies are advocating an inclusion of the imputed value of women’s unpaid work in the construction of national accounts (see, for example, Levy Institute-UNDP, 2005). Even if women were able to achieve official recognition of their work, still their bargaining power within the household would likely be lower than that of men if they are not able to make monetary contributions to the joint resources of the household. Read full article: UNDP-IPC One pager

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