The real cost of unpaid labour for women, girls

Dar es Salaam. It has always been a public secret that women bear the biggest brunt of the HIV/Aids pandemic, but now, gender activists are saying the cost of that burden is more often than not, understated.

From having to sacrifice their other economic and social roles to taking up unpaid ‘work’ at home in caring for HIV/Aids patients and victims, the burden is proving to be too much on women, activists who are lobbying for policy protection have said.

“We need women to be engaged in paying economic activities; in planning and budgeting to break the cycle of poverty in our society,” said Ms Gema Akilimani, an activist with the Tanzania Gender Networking Programme (TGNP).

A workshop organised by Oxfam last week in Dar es Salaam to discuss the experiences of women in unpaid labour concluded that most of those trapped in this situation tend to increasingly get poor since they are locked out of economic activities.

“There is need for a national policy to address this concern. When women spend more time performing domestic chores and taking care of HIV/Aids patients without pay, they get trapped in a cycle of poverty,” said Ms Akilimani.

A recent Time Use (TU) study of unpaid care work in Tanzania by TGNP revealed what has generally been the case since time immemorial -- that women do more unpaid care work than males; girls too, do much more unpaid care work than boys.

Gauged on a daily basis, the report noted that girls spend an average of 126 minutes doing unpaid work against 68 minutes for boys. This means girls do nearly twice as much unpaid and care work than boys.

Women aged 18-49 years do an average of 277 minutes (more than four hours) of unpaid care work each day compared to only 76 minutes for men. In overall, males spent a total of 5 per cent of their day on unpaid care work (less than an hour and half) compared to 14 per cent for females (three-and-a-half hours).

Gender bias

Ms Jane Remme, programme advisor on women’s economic empowerment and care at Oxfam Tanzania, said at the Dar es Salaam workshop that addressing this gender bias with regards to unpaid care calls for a concerted effort by policymakers.

She said: “Gender roles need to be modified in unpaid care and in productive/paid work to ensure equal distribution of care responsibilities from the household to national level.”

Raising public awareness on the need to not restrict the role of unpaid work in taking care of HIV/Aids patients to women can also go a long way in addressing the problem, she said.

According to UNAids estimates for Tanzania, at least 1.4 million people were living with HIV in the country, in 2015. This equates to an estimated HIV prevalence of 4.7 per cent, for adults aged between 15 and 49 years.

It is also estimated that around 880,000 young Tanzanians aged between 0 and 17 years were orphaned due Aids during the same time. The number of children aged between 0 and 14, living with HIV stood at an average of 91,000, according to UNAids.

Cultural norms

The statistics may not be comforting, especially for women and girls who, due to cultural norms, are mostly left to take care of these people.

Gender activists in the country have described it as “double burden” that women carry. Double because women are the ones, in most cases, who do the general unpaid domestic work; and now, they have to also take care of the sick.

More so, double burden in many cases because women are the ones to look for resources to perform the unpaid work of home-based care. For example, water becomes even more important in a situation where a family is taking care of a sick person. And in rural areas, where there are critical shortages, the burden of hauling water rests primarily on women and girls. The major concern is that this adversely affects their contribution to economic development -- and it’s a vicious cycle that relegates them to the bottom of the ladder.

“For girls, it means a gloom future because their education is affected,” says TGNP’s Ms Akilimani.

“At least if care-related infrastructure and services are improved, women can spend less time on such responsibilities like cooking, fetching water; they will also play a more central role in productive work.”

She argues that by virtue of the huge numbers of women, what the current situation translates to is that the more significant portion of the country’s population is locked out of productive economic activities.

“If this is reversed and we get more women involved in paid-for economic activities, we can raise the national income and have a more positive impact on the country’s economic growth.”

According to her, if unpaid care and domestic chores were valued in monetary terms, they could contribute 10-39 per cent to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and boost the country’s economy.

Better users of resources

“We must always understand that women are good planners, and better users of resources. It does not help us as a country to have all the care burden and domestic work or activities, that are unpaid left to women and girls.”