Counting on Women’s Work Without Counting Women’s Work
Counting on Women’s Work Without Counting Women’s Work
Women’s unpaid work in Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Tunisia
Beyond Group (previously Beyond Reform and Development), in partnership with OXFAM, conducted a literature review on women’s unpaid work in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Tunisia. The aim of this literature review is to inform the design of programmes that promote women’s economic empowerment in the MENA region, and to pinpoint the gaps in the literature which would require further investigation for more accurate programmatic guidance.
This paper is based on an extensive in-depth review of existing literature on paid labour, gender based division of household tasks, unpaid non-economic labour and economic labour, as well as the different ecosystems within which these concepts intertwine.
The paper starts by reviewing the terminology used when tackling unpaid work and the different conceptual perspectives found in the literature. This is followed by a review of the factors affecting unpaid work as well as the institutions responsible for regulating, managing and reducing the influence of these factors on women’s participation in unpaid work.
A subsequent section looks at the existing data and information on women’s unpaid work in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Tunisia at the level of a) regulatory frameworks, b) socio-cultural norms and c) socio-economic contexts within the respective countries.
The paper then goes on to review the suggested framework for responding to unpaid work and finally concludes with several research questions that are lacking in literature and that could help governments, policy makers and programme designers in addressing unpaid work.