Women's Unpaid Work - Albanian Case (original) (raw)

Unpaid work is the production of goods and services by household members that are not sold on the market. Some unpaid work is for the consumption within the family, such as cooking, gardening and house cleaning. The products of unpaid work may also be consumed by people not living in the household, e.g. cooking a meal for visiting friends, helping in a soup kitchen for homeless people, mowing the lawn of an elderly relative, or coaching the local football team. At a national level, well-being is often peroxide by aggregate income or production per head (e.g. GDP per capita). However, neither measure is fully adequate if there is a considerable amount of unpaid work or if growth occurs because of substitution of paid for unpaid hours of work. Household production constitutes an important aspect of economic activity. Ignoring it may lead to incorrect inferences about levels and changes in well-being. Using the secondary data, this presentation presents the fact that women do much of the unpaid work. Neglecting to include it in wellbeing parameters, underestimates women's contribution to the economy and directly connected to gender inequality. Another very import negative aspect of neglecting it, is deprivation of women from social security schemes because for they unpaid work they are not paid and also not deposited their social security contribution. Evaluation of unpaid work it would help employing cost benefit analysis to choose the most efficient and less costly way to provide the services covered by unpaid work.