Valuing Women's Unwaged Work

A

BILL

To require government departments and other public bodies to include in the production of statistics relating to the gross domestic product and satellite accounts a calculation of the unwaged work of women.

Presented by Mildred Gordon
supported by
Mr Harry Cohen, Tessa Jowell,
Alice Mahon, Mr Tony Benn,
Mr Alan Simpson, Jean Corston,
Helen Jackson, Audrey Wise,
Mr Dennis Skinner, Mrs Anne Campbell
and Mrs Irene Adams

Ordered, by The House of Commons,
to be Printed, 8 March 1995

A
B I L L
TO

Whereas according to the International Labour Office women do two-thirds of the world's work but receive only five per cent of its income and own one per cent of its assets; and

Whereas paragraph 120 of Forward Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women, which calls for quantification of the unremunerated contribution of women to agriculture, food production, reproduction and household activities, and its inclusion in the Gross National Product, was ratified by the UN General Assembly on 26th November 1985; and

Whereas in June 1993 the European Parliament adopted The Valuing of Women's Unremunerated Work, a Report which among other recommendations calls on Member States to implement Paragraph 120; and

Whereas the System of National Accounts 1993 now defines unwaged 15 work on family farms and in other family businesses, as well as housework and other caring work, as "productive activity";
BE IT THEREFORE ENACTED by the Queen's Most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:

(2) These quantifications shall be disaggregated by gender.

(3) The monetary value of such unremunerated work shall be calculated according to the abilities, responsibility, concentration and intensity which the work requires, so that these calculations avoid valuations which are based on wage differentials.

(4) Both the quantification and valuation of unwaged work, as described in subsections (1) and (3) above shall be included in satellite accounts of the Gross Domestic Product.