Women In Informal Employment (Invisible Care Work)

Abstract

The study is based on the significant contribution of women towards unpaid care work in the economy (home based care work, providing care to the children, elders and disabled family members). India accounts a large portion of unpaid household chores and activities by women. Despite the important contribution of invisible care work in overall economic development, countries are still failed in focusing and measuring the contribution of this sector. Neglecting unpaid work leads to limit the effectiveness of policies across socio-economic areas, notably gender inequality and other women empowerment segments. These activities are excluded from the accounts of almost every country’s GDP, because these are considered as voluntary community services towards their family members. The UN (united nation) statistical commission, which is responsible for estimating a country domestic income, has not specified care economics in its range of system of national accounts (SNA) on the ground that it is difficult to measure monetary value of these services. These unpaid activities affect the wellbeing of women and limit their priorities towards education, health and their participation in economic activities. Despite of these tremendous services rendered by women in shaping others future has neglected and shows the government failure in computation of their efforts in monetary terms. This paper has an attempt to analyse the methods through which participation of women can be calculated and how it effect economic growth.