64th ISI World Statistics Congress - Ottawa, Canada

64th ISI World Statistics Congress - Ottawa, Canada

Redrawing the boundaries: Recognising the different dimensions of unpaid care work

Conference

64th ISI World Statistics Congress - Ottawa, Canada

Format: IPS Abstract

Keywords: ilo, labour, official statistics, unpaid-care-work, work

Abstract

The body of statistical standards underlying labour statistics globally are set by the International Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLS), hosted by the ILO. To support integration with economic statistics, labour statistical standards have historically sought to align the scope and definition of employment with that of SNA production, widely used in economic statistics for macroeconomic monitoring and analysis. As a result, labour statistics have systematically excluded from their scope the wide range of unpaid productive activities, undertaken predominantly by women and girls, to provide services for final use by their households and by other households.
In 2013, the adoption of a new Resolution concerning statistics of work, employment and labour underutilization by the 19th ICLS introduced a novel framework and revised definitions and guidance that have sought to redress this systematic historical bias in the scope of labour statistics. Among the new features introduced is the first internationally agreed statistical definition of work comprising all “paid and unpaid productive activity”, a “forms of work” framework to support joint development of statistics on paid and unpaid forms of work, a revised narrower concept of employment along with new measures of labour underutilization beyond unemployment, and new separate concepts and statistical definitions of own-use production work, volunteer work, and unpaid trainee work, to support their comprehensive measurement.
The new elements introduced by the 19th ICLS Resolution have not only served to address the gender bias inherent in the historical labour statistical standards, but have also created new opportunities to promote the development of comprehensive systems of official labour market and work statistics that enable joint monitoring and analysis of the relationships between paid work and unpaid forms of work, including the impacts that participation in unpaid forms of work has on participation in paid work and vice-versa, their contribution to household livelihoods, to community wellbeing, to maintaining or transforming gender norms among others. These new developments, while still enabling continued correspondence with major economic statistical standards, have served to expand the relevance of labour statistics to meet wider policy demands, from macro-economic and job creation, food security and poverty eradication policies, to social, gender, education and training policies.
This presentation will provide an overview of the changes introduced by the 19th ICLS Resolution on statistics of work, employment and labour underutilization to redraw the boundaries of labour statistics to address historic gender biases, and promote the expansion of labour statistics to recognize unpaid provision of services as an integral part of work statistics programmes capable of generating a comprehensive set of statistics on paid work and unpaid forms of work, including different dimensions of unpaid care work.