Women’s unpaid work ‘vital to economy’

Press, 6 December 1989, Page 39

Women’s unpaid work ‘vital to economy’

PA Wellington Women’s unpaid work was vital to the smooth running of the economy and society, the Minister of Women’s Affairs, Mrs Shields, told a seminar on valuing unpaid work.

“In fact, in New Zealand, paid work could not continue without the unpaid work of women who care for children, the elderly and other dependents, run local marae and groups that provide essential services for the community and perform tasks that keep households and families functioning,” she said. The distribution of paid and unpaid work throughout the community was critical to the development of a social policy which was not only fairer and more humanitarian but also more efficient and economical.

But while national accounts mainly focused on the public sector and the private sector, the two sectors of the economy where women’s work was

predominant — the community and household sectors — only featured in the accounts as users of goods and services. “As far as those indicators are concerned, women working on an unpaid basis in the home for example do not produce goods and services, they only consume them,” Mrs Shields said. But in fact food was prepared, children cared for and clothes made within households, all services that would otherwise have to be paid for and have an equivalent in the formal paid economy. Recent studies showed that as more women entered the paid workforce, the amount of time spent by men on domestic work did not increase proportionately. “That means that women who enter the paid workforce on a part or full time basis are invariably doing two jobs.”

A joint Women’s Af-fairs-Statistics project to

measure unpaid work linked in with the Government’s commitment to employment equity, she said.

The Government was committed to valuing women’s unpaid work, and this had been recognised through increased funding to early-childhood education and changes in superannuation policy. Many women wanted to be given a legal right to 50 per cent of the wages coming into a household, Ms Margy-Jean Malcolm of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs said. Ms Malcolm said women had pointed out the irony that on separation or divorce they would be entitled to a half-share of matrimonial property, yet while in the relationship had to pester their partners for housekeeping money, let alone anything for themselves.

Separated and divorced women also had difficulties getting enough money to support themselves and

their children. They felt there should be an automatic inflation and adjustment for maintenance payments, Ms Malcolm said. Many women had also complained to Ministryrun workshops about the lack of home help or other systems to help out when they were sick, she said.

Though Social Welfare spending on home help had nearly doubled over the last two years, demand was also growing, fuelled by factors such as early hospital discharge after childbirth and increased community care for previously institutionalised people.

Women were not about to renounce their caregiving or community work roles, but they wanted more choice about the conditions under which their roles were played out, she said.