What is gender statistics?

 

ICATUS - Draft of the International Classification of Activities for Time Use Statistics

The draft ICATUS is a step toward promoting the collection and compilation of data on paid and unpaid work. Two main issues that it specifically addresses are:

• Better measurement of production of goods by household members for own final use. These involve activities considered as work within the production boundary of the System of National Accounts (SNA) but are generally underestimated in labour force statistics, and
• Better identification of SNA work in informal sector enterprises. Many of these activities are not covered well in data collection on economic activity for several reasons - women and men who engage in such activities may not consider these as work because they are perceived as too small-scale, of subsistence-level, of short duration or seasonal, or because many of these activities may actually be done as part of production of services for own final use (e.g., cooking food for both the household and for sale); designers of surveys may not identify these accurately in operational definitions and in survey instruments; enumerators may have inadequate knowledge of what these activities are and may impose their own biases and judgments in recording them.

The draft ICATUS seeks to provide a comprehensive categorization of activities associated with household production of goods for own final use and informal sector activities. These activities are an important component of the work of women and to some degree of men in developing countries but are not defined in most classifications of activities for data collection on time use.