ISLAMABAD, Nov 1: Trade liberalization has doubled the burden on women by forcing them to work to compensate for the loss of income due to the reduction in paid employment for men.
This was the conclusion of a study on ‘Modelling Gender Dimensions of the Impact of Economic Reforms on Time Allocation among Market Work, Household Work and Leisure’ which was presented at a seminar at the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE) here on Saturday. Dr A.R. Kemal, Director, PIDE, presided over the seminar.
As in the other developing countries, Rizwana Siddiqui, research economist at PIDE, pointed out that women in Pakistan played multiple roles and contributed to the economy and struggled shoulder to shoulder with men to fight poverty.
They are involved in multifarious household activities such as food preparation, child rearing, taking care of the elderly and farm animals, fetching water and fuels. But, their contributions remain unreckoned in policy formulation and the standard macroeconomic models, she added.
According to various studies, she said women’s contribution to household production was 2.5 to 14 times that of men in a household. When, in addition to household work, they participate in market activities, their working hours are far in excess of those of men.
The study, in spite of its valuable insight into the unpleasant effects of trade liberalization and structural adjustment policies pursued by the government in obedience to international financial institutions, is rather irksome in its use of the word ‘leisure’ as substitute for the involuntary state of joblessness.
Normally, this state of affairs is not enjoyable at all, but adds to miseries of all alike, women as well as men.
That ‘leisure’ is an experience imposed on the working people is evident from her finding that ‘trade liberalization in presence of increase in sales taxes leads to a rise in labour force participation of both men and women in paid work’, but they end up losing in terms of leisure time.
The reason is that these policies increase on them the pressure to make up for diminishing incomes and rising cost of living.
Ms Siddiqui also looked into the impact of reduction in government expenditure as part of its pursuit of macroeconomic stability. It impacts ordinary households by curtailing the opportunities of paid employment. The same is the effect of rise in government revenue and removal of subsidies on commodities consumed by low and middle income households.
Similarly, in terms of fiscal adjustment, she further observed that these policies reduced paid-employment for women and household work increased as the entire household toiled to overcome the resultant cash crunch by substituting goods produced within the households for the market goods.
These findings show that the policies such as trade liberalization and structural adjustment are not ‘gender blind’, as claimed.
There was a need to analyze the impact of macroeconomic policies using gender-aware models to collect gender- disaggregated data in all spheres of life, Ms Siddiqui added.
Dr Kemal, in his presidential remarks, commended the author on her pioneering work and hoped that this study would pave the way for further work on this important topic.