Aspects

There are various methods for measuring unpaid work. For recording the volume of unpaid work, time use surveys can be compiled, such as those which were carried out in Germany in 1991-92 and 2001-02. There are several possibilities for working out the cash value of unpaid work (cf. UNPAC 1999; Schäfer, 2004, p. 968). For valuing unpaid work using the opportunity cost method the hours worked annually in unpaid work in a society are added and multiplied by the hourly rate a person would be able to earn in the employment market in the time used for unpaid work. Another possibility is to value unpaid work using the market replacement cost method. Here, three methods rates are empirically taken together: the generalist method, the specialist method and the calculation of the value of unpaid work on the basis of the average wage rate for the country. Both calculation using the generalist method and calculation using the specialist method are used to calculate the hourly wage rate of a worker employed in the household.  The generalist method is based on the salary of a home employee who undertakes all the work in the household. Valuation using the specialist method, on the other hand, takes as a basis the wage rates of specialist staff (e.g. educationalists, tradespeople, cooks) and thus uses different wage rates for different work in the household. A third possibility is to take as a basis for the calculation the average salary in a country (including employer contributions). By using a gender neutral average wage, gender-discriminatory payment in the employment market is thus not adopted when determining the value of unpaid work.

Germany has compiled a household satellite system on the basis of the time-use surveys of 1992 and 2001, which shows the range and monetary value of household production. This satellite system is outside traditional overall economic calculations and, parallel to them, shows the effect of including unpaid work in the gross domestic product. Household production is set against gross domestic product and compared with market production. In this way, changes in the ratio between market and household production can be determined and the economic importance of unpaid work taken more strongly into account in decision-making processes. In Germany, the generalist rate was used for calculating the value of unpaid work in compiling the household satellite system in 2001. To this were added expenditure on food and kitchen equipment and pro rata rental expenditure. Although the value determined was way below the actual value of household production because of the use of the generalist rate, the “gross value-added of household production” for 2001 calculated in this way amounted to 820,000 million euros. This was roughly the equivalent of the value-added of German industry and the trade, hotel and catering and transport segments together (cf. BMFSFJ, 2003).

Compiling a satellite account of household production is a compromise to accommodate the demand to take unpaid work into account in economic figures without including it completely in the gross domestic product. In the view of many economic experts, inclusion of household production in the gross domestic product would bring both problems of content and practical problems for the calculation. Instead, unpaid work is now included in a new system of overall economic figures.
Complete inclusion of unpaid work in economic statistics would be necessary, however, to make the essential significance of unpaid work for the economy visible. Further strategies should therefore be followed to integrate unpaid work into economic statistics and include the interests of people working without pay in political and economic decision-making processes, e.g. by introducing gender budgeting.

Both unpaid and paid work in the household are undervalued for various reasons.
In the case of unpaid work in the household and family, the low value attributed to such work is due to, among other things, the lack of inclusion in economic figures. Moreover, skills needed for work in the household and family, such as precision and empathy, are regarded as typically female skills, which every woman possesses “by nature”. Thus they are accorded no special value and are accordingly either not paid at all or rewarded with low pay as household and personal services (housekeeper, nanny, etc.) or in “typically female” jobs such as playgroup, kindergarten, etc. workers.
The undervaluing of work in the house and the family has its origins not least in a socially-constructed link between the (material) value accorded to a job and its output. Work in the household and family creates no output in the classic sense and is thus mostly regarded as low-productive. Input, on the other hand, i.e. the demands on the working person, and the social relevance of the work are accorded a less low position in the valuation.

Gender specific division of labor is the splitting of socially necessary work into paid employment and unpaid work in the household and family and their attribution to women and men. Gender specific division of labor is encouraged by prevailing stereotypes of women and men. In the stereotyping of women and of men, actual interests and life situations are neglected. Unpaid work in the household and family is thus defined as “women’s work”. In this way, men’s absenting themselves from housework, child-rearing and the care of family members is “legitimized”. The role allocation also contributes to the fact that the participation of men in the household does not increase in the same measure, even when women’s paid employment increases (cf. BMFSFJ, 2003).

Many structures in Germany, e.g. the tax system (see family-related tax policy) or the social security system, continue to be based on the assumption of a gender specific division of labor and thus have a positive impact on its continuation (see social security).
Nor is the infrastructure in Germany, with inadequate provision of childcare institutions (especially for infants), nursing care services, household services, etc., exactly geared to households with two earners or employed single-parent families. Not least, gender specific division of labor is even encouraged and promoted by virtue of the distribution and organization of paid employment, since, because of long hours of work, one partner – and this is usually the woman because on average she earns less – is “compelled” to give up working or only work part-time when there are family duties (due to children or to relatives requiring care, etc.).
While the statistical per-head income of women is hardly any lower than that of men (cf. BMFSFJ, 2005, p. 448), women, however, because of the gender specific division of labor, largely obtain this income indirectly via other people, e.g. as part of a community of need), while men obtain theirs far more frequently in the form of their own income. This economic dependence can have a negative impact on the life of the affected woman, for instance on her negotiating position and freedom of consumption within the family, on her recognition by others or her own self-confidence, but also on the security of her living e.g. in the event of a separation or in old age (see social security).

• United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) (Hg.): Engendering Macroeconomics and Macroeconomic Policies, (Çagatay, Nilüfer), New York 1998.
• United Nations Development Programme (UNDP): Human Development Report 1999. Chapter 3: The Invisible Heart – Care and the Global Economy, New York/Oxford 1999.
• United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP): Working Group of Statistical Experts, 11th Session, Bangkok, 23-26 November 1999: Measurement of Paid and Unpaid Work. 
  
• United Nations Platform for Action Committee Manitoba (UNPAC): Alternative Economic Measures, 2005. 
  
• United Nations Platform for Action Committee Manitoba (UNPAC): Valuing Unpaid work. Summary of a Keynote Address given by Evelyn Dresher of Mothers are Women at UNPAC's "Counting Women's Work Symposium" held in Brandon in May 1999.

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