Include women’s unpaid work in GDP calculation

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday again directed the authorities concerned to bring women's unpaid household work into the calculation of Bangladesh's gross domestic product (GDP) in the next national budget.

"Women's domestic work is now underreported. It's not acceptable," she said.

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The premier made the comments while chairing a meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec) in Dhaka, Planning Minister MA Mannan told journalists after the meeting.

She had asked to do so earlier in another Ecnec meeting last week.

If the contributions, especially the household contributions of women, had been added, then the GDP would have been much higher, she said.

"This is such a job [for women], which has no fixed work hours, no rest, no leave, no salary and no pension," said Hasina while sharing her definition of women's unpaid work.

Mannan said they may not be able to evaluate the love and affection of the mother. But women's work like washing of clothes, cooking etc can be brought into the calculation, he said.

"We have already passed directives to the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) to do some work on how this could be incorporated," said the minister.

However, shedding light on this issue, Shamsul Alam, state minister for planning, said the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics estimates the GDP following a system of national accounts in light of the Statistical Commission of the United Nations.

Due to limitations in the international formula, he suggested forming a shadow satellite account and thus estimating the contributions of women pricing their labour in financial terms.

A satellite account is a framework which extends the central framework of the national accounts, in which only a small part of the unpaid productive activities of private households are taken into account.

At the meeting, the premier also asked the authorities concerned to put more emphasis on utilising the untapped potentials of "blue economy".

According to the World Bank, the blue economy is the "sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods, and jobs while preserving the health of ocean ecosystem".