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The purpose of this indicator is to identify the unequal division of responsibilities correlated with gender differences in economic opportunities including low female labour force participation, occupational sex segregation, and earnings differentials.

This indicator is defined as the proportion of time spent in a day on unpaid domestic and care work by men and women. Unpaid domestic and care work refers to activities related to the provision of services for own final use by household members, or by family members living in other households. Women often spend disproportionately more time on unpaid domestic and care work than men. The need for a gender balance in the distribution of unpaid domestic and care work has been increasingly recognized and the Sustainable Development Goals address the issue in the target 5.4.)

Min responsible for gender relations

Min responsible for gender relations

Annual

Percentage (%)

Indicator 5.4.1 only considers the own-use production work of services, or in other words, the activities related to unpaid domestic services and unpaid caregiving services undertaken by households for their own use. These activities are listed in ICATUS 2016 under the major divisions “3. Unpaid domestic services for household and family members” and “4. Unpaid caregiving services for household and family members”.

Unpaid domestic and care work refers to activities including food preparation, dishwashing, cleaning and upkeep of the dwelling, laundry, ironing, gardening, caring for pets, shopping, installation, servicing and repair of personal and household goods, childcare, and care of the sick, elderly or disabled household and family members, among others. These activities are listed in ICATUS 2016 under the major divisions “3. Unpaid domestic services for household and family members” and “4. Unpaid caregiving services for household and family members”.

is by sex, age and location.

The categories for disaggregation, by dimension, are as follows:

Sex: female/male;

Age: the recommended age groups are: 15+, 15-24, 25-44, 45-54, 55-64 and 65+

Location: urban/rural (following national definitions given the lack of international definition). 

Data presented for this indicator are expressed as a proportion of time in a day. Weekly data is averaged over seven days of the week to obtain the daily average time.

Proportion of time spent on unpaid domestic and care work is calculated by dividing the daily average number of hours spent on unpaid domestic and care work by 24 hours.

Proportion of time spent on unpaid domestic and care work () is calculated as:

Indicator 5.4.1 =(Daily number of hours spent on domestic work + Daily number of hours spent on care work) /24×100

where

Daily number of hours spent on relevant activities=((Total number of hours spent by the population on relevant activities)/(Total population (regardless of whether they participated in the activity)))

If data on time spent are weekly, data are averaged over seven days of the week to obtain daily time spent.

Average number of hours spent on unpaid domestic and care work derives from time use statistics that is collected through stand-alone time-use surveys or a time-use module in multi-purpose household surveys. Data on time-use may be summarized and presented as either (1) average time spent for participants (in a given activity) only or (2) average time spent for all population of a certain age (total relevant population). In the former type of averages, the total time spent by the individuals who performed an activity is divided by the number of persons who performed it (participants). In the latter type of averages, the total time is divided by the total relevant population (or a sub-group thereof), regardless of whether people performed the activity or not.

Policy makers address issues concerning the proportion of time spent on unpaid domestic and care work. The unequal distribution of unpaid care work between women and men represents an infringement of women’s rights (UN, 2013) and also a brake on their economic empowerment. Policies and strategies need to made to bridge the missing link that influences gender gaps in labour outcomes. There needs to be a provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family. 

Time use statistics have been used for: (1) provide a measure of quality of life or general wellbeing of individuals and households; (2) offer a more comprehensive measurement of all forms of work, including unpaid household service work; (3) produce data relevant for monitoring gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls and are essential inputs for the policy and political dialogue on gender equality.

International comparability of time-use statistics is limited by a number of factors, including:

1. Diary versus stylized time-use survey. Data on time-use can be collected through a 24-hour diary (light diary) or stylized questionnaire. With diaries, respondents are asked to report on what activity they were performing when they started the day, what activity followed, and the time that activity began and ended, and so forth through the 24 hours of the day. Stylized time-use questions ask respondents to recall the amount of time they allocated to a certain activity over a specified period, such as a day or week. Often, stylized time-use questions are attached as a module to a multipurpose household survey. The 24-hour diary method yields better results than the stylized method but is a more expensive mode of data collection. Data obtained from these two different data collection methods are usually not comparable, and even data collected with different stylized questions might not be comparable given that the level of details asked about activities performed might differ from one instrument to another, thus impacting the total time spent on a given activity. 

2. Time-use activity classification. Regional and national classifications of time-use activities may differ from ICATUS 2016, resulting in data that are not comparable across countries.

3. Time-use data presented refer to the “main activity” only. Any “secondary activity” performed simultaneously with the main activity is not reflected in the average times shown. For instance, a woman may be cooking and looking after a child simultaneously. For countries reporting cooking as the main activity, time spent caring for children is not accounted for and reflected in the statistics. This may affect international comparability of data on time spent caring for children; it may also underestimate the time women spend on this activity.

4. Different target age population used by countries and age groups used also make time use data difficult to compare across countries.

All the metadata shown in this document was gathered from United Nation Statistics Division. The metadata was extracted from https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/.