Women are making a special contribution in the workplace
Zohra Yasmin :
Women make up half of the total population of Bangladesh, although even a few years ago men outnumbered women.
In the last few years, due to advances in medical science and increased access of women to health and medical services, female child and maternal mortality rates have decreased significantly.
As a result of which the probability of survival of men and women in Bangladesh has become almost equal and their share in the total population has also become equal.
The society of this developing South Asian country is patriarchal like many other countries of the East, under which the contribution of this half of the population has not been properly evaluated.
Women’s participation in the main sectors of the economy in Bangladesh increased manifold with the development of the garment industry in the late eighties, but women have always contributed significantly to the country’s economy. In addition to the ready-made garment sector, women’s participation in other sectors is high and is steadily increasing. Even their traditional occupation in agriculture is increasing their participation.
According to the Labour Force Survey data, in the last 10 years, the participation rate of women in the agricultural sector has increased significantly while the participation rate of men has decreased. Yet women’s contribution to national income is negligible.
The main reasons for this are: In the vast majority of the productive sphere, women are characterized as unproductive and mere consumers; Women’s participation in productive sectors such as agriculture is not properly included in national statistics; Women’s household work should not be considered as economic work; Lack of comparative statistical methods bringing together women’s participation in the workplace and household work into a measurable single standard.
According to 136 Bangladesh Development Survey, there is still no universally accepted method of economically recognizing and quantifying domestic work. And as a result, about 70 percent of the country’s working women population aged 15 to 64 years are called ‘housewives’ and kept out of the total labour force of the state.
When the United Nations first published the system in 1950, it excluded all goods and services produced for household consumption, and not marketed, from GDP. With some amendments in 1993, it recognized the production of goods and services for household consumption as economic activities. Surveys of time spent on housework are currently being conducted in 82 countries.
But no action has been taken in this regard in our country yet. Economists say, women’s contribution to GDP will double if the economic evaluation of women’s work inside and outside the home.
The above estimates do not account for all unpaid work outside the home of women. Moreover, when women participate in income-earning activities outside the home, despite their suitability, the fact that they are engaged in negligible productive work is also not revealed. This information is very important. Because, marginally productive jobs are in many cases statistically less prominent.
Moreover, women’s productivity is not fully reflected in statistics. A working woman has many duties as a housewife They feel restricted to work in areas far away from home as they cannot avoid it. Whereas jobs in remote areas are generally highly productive. For the same reason, when a working housewife does not accept promotion in her job because she has to move to another district, she also loses her productivity and fails to contribute at a higher rate to the national income.
Additionally, a working woman’s contribution as a housewife is compared to that of full-time housewives who are assumed to devote more time and attention to housework, being more productive at home. But studies have shown that the quality of a working woman’s time outside the home is higher than that of a non-working woman. As a result, despite spending less time on housework, she is as productive as a non-working woman and in some cases more productive.
These facts were also not taken into consideration in the earlier surveys conducted to determine the contribution of women to national income. Moreover, another fact that has not been taken into account is the fact that the marginal utility of women’s earnings is assumed to be low. In the existing social system, the male is identified as the head of the household, he is accepted as the breadwinner of the family and his earnings dominate the statistics.
(The writer is a Manager, Public Relations Division, Bangladesh Sugar and Food Industries Corporation.)
