GENDER DIVISION OF LABOR

the assignment of tasks and roles

to men and women on account sex
 Roles of Women and Men
WOMEN MEN
Reproductive • Childbearing and child rearing •No clearly defined role
Role • Organizing of households
Productive • Rural Areas: often disguised in subsistence • Often “primary” income
Role economy or domestic work earners
• Urban Areas: many in small scale enterprises • Often organized around
(“informal sector: mainly in household (often this role i.e., workers’
disguised) and neighborhood level) organization/trade
• As ‘secondary’ income earners, make a critical unions
contribution to income of poor households
• Female headed may be sole income earner
Community managing: Community politics:
Community- • Is an extension of reproductive role into • Organized at formal
level Role community action political level i.e.,
• Because services they need in reproductive traditional decision-
role not/badly provided making structures;
Community politics: • Leaders (often paid)
• Tend to be leaders by virtue of relationship with
other men
• Rank and file (voluntary)
 The Economy Sectors

Sector Characteristics
Private Sector Produces market-oriented goods & services for profit
Commodity Economy
Public Sector • Produces social & physical infrastructure for
Economy consumption & investment
• Employees are paid wages
• Financed through taxation, user charges & borrowing
• Many services are free at point of consumption
The Care Economy • Produces family & community-oriented goods &
services as part of the process of caring for people
• Work is not paid – relatively intensive in its use of
female labor
• Contributes to commodity economy and the public
service economy by supplying human resources and by
maintaining the social framework
 The Care Economy
unpaid care economy paid economy

human capabilities & social framework

social & economic social & economic

household & infrastructure infrastructure
community public private
care sector sector sector

consumption & investment commodities

The interdependence of the paid and unpaid economies

Source: Diane Elson, 1997
 Challenging the Stereotype
Assumptions About the
Household Made by Planners
ASSUMPTIONS EMPIRICAL CHALLENGE
The structure Nuclear High proportion of other household
of low
income structures e.g. extended families, women-
households headed households
The The man is the Double role of men i.e. production &
organization community politics
of tasks in breadwinner
the Triple role of women i.e. reproduction,
The woman is a production & community managing/
household
housewife community politics
The control Equal access to Often there is unequal access to resources
of resources resources by different household members
and decision-
Harmonious gender Gender relations are conflictive
making in the
relations in the
household household
Household is therefore Need for disaggregation of the household
treated as a unit
 Health Service Restructuring:
increase in efficiency or
transfer of costs?

Action Results
Reduction in ancillary Women doing laundry for
services (e.g.: laundry hospitalized relatives &
services) in hospital friends

Reduction in time patients Women look after

allowed to spend in hospital convalescing relatives &
friends
 Gender difference in time use

Percentage of time spent by rural Sri Lankan women and men

on different activities
Activity Women Men
Food preparation 92 8
Winnowing & parboiling rice 100 0
Preserving food for the hungry season 80 20
Storing grain at harvest time 30 70
Production -fruits & vegetables- home consumption

80 20
Fetching water 98 2
Collecting firewood 65 35
Upkeep of house & yard 95 5
Bringing up children 90 10
Bathing children 80 20
Attending to the sick in the family 85 15
 Example of policy implication of the
importance of time for poor people

Policy Result

That imposes time and financial Reduce ability to escape

poverty
burdens, e.g., reduction in health
care

That reduces the time burden Increase ability to

on the poor, e.g., improving escape poverty
water supply
Reasons for the Tendency of Development
Planning to be Gender-Blind

1. Gender-blindness of analytical framework in

economics

1.1 Dichotomy in economic theory between

macroeconomics and microeconomics.

1.2 Macroeconomics deals with aggregates and is

not concerned with people and their differences
Reasons for the Tendency of Development
Planning to be Gender-Blind

1.3 Gender bias in microeconomic theory leads to unsatisfactory

treatment of gender and gender-related issues by economists and
planners.

1.4 Invalid assumptions regarding the nature and importance of

boundary between household and market

1.5 Failure to recognize contribution of household, particularly the

women, to social and economic welfare leads to under
enumeration of women’s contributions to economic production and
flawed view of allocative efficiency.
 Reasons for the Tendency of Development
Planning to be Gender-Blind

1.6 Invalid assumption re time allocation between work and leisure

for women leads to flawed measurement of labor force
participation, ignoring of value of unpaid work, opportunity cost
and elasticity of women’s time.

1.7 Failure to consider economic significance of social, cultural and

institutional context which tend to restrict women’s activities
leads to allocative inefficiency.
Reasons for the Tendency of Development
Planning to be Gender-Blind

2. Invisibility of women in statistics: time-use, informal sector,

unpaid work, home-based activities.

3. Values and attitudes of planners influence their planning work

• Dominant role given to economics.

• Gender bias

• Low value given to genuine consultation with sectors

especially the poor, women, ethnic minorities and laborers