Include household work to hike NIA by 90%

IF the National Income Accounts (NIA) only included unpaid household work, particularly those done by housewives, the country’s economic growth would have been higher by more than 90 percent.

This was in the recent paper “Improving the Way We Measure the Increasing Contribution of Women in Nation-Building” released by the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB), that took into consideration hours of unpaid housework between 1990 to 1998 and 2000 to 2006.

Results of the 1990 to 1998 period show that gross domestic product (GDP) would have increased by 37 percent and for the 2000 to 2006 study, it would have risen 66 percent to 94 percent.

The paper said conventional GDP factoring does not include unpaid housework services such as cleaning, decorating and maintenance of the dwelling unit; cleaning, servicing and repair of households durable goods, including vehicles, and preparation and serving of meals.

Conventional GDP also does not include the care, training and instruction of children; caring of the sick, infirm or the old, and transportation of members of the households or their goods.

These figures were cited by former National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) director general Solita Monsod, who said failure to recognize women’s contribution to the economy, in whatever country, will make them “invisible” in terms of planning and support services.

She blamed this on the fact that under the System of National Accounts (SNA), services produced for home consumption is invisible because they are excluded by definition. It is not part of the SNA production boundary since 1953.

It was only recently that the United Nations SNA allowed the creation of satellite accounts which could be linked to the SNA. However, Monsod said this was not enough and more needs to be done to improve the situation.

“I submit that women in households are disabled and are handicapped not physically, but economically and socially because their services have been rendered invisible. If they are visible, they are definitely not mainstreamed and institutionalized. I also submit that unless this gap is satisfactorily addressed, the quest to attain gender-equity goals and targets will be that much more difficult to achieve,” said Monsod.

Even NSCB Secretary-General Romulo Virola said this is something lamentable that despite all the gains the Philippines has made in improving gender equality, more needs to be done even with the passage of the Magna Carta for Women that mandated government agencies to allot 5 percent of their budgets to gender-related projects and programs. –Cai Ordinario / Reporter, Businessmirror