Women's Unaccounted Work and Contribution: A Case of Ukraine

The need for assessing women’s unpaid work and reproductive activity has long been discussed by economists within the context of estimation of a country’s economic growth rates, as well as by sociologists within the inequality studies. The world statistical practice has acknowledged that working time budget surveys remain to be the most relevant tool to obtain reliable information on unaccounted work because such surveys allow estimating the ratio of time spent by women and men on labour market employment and on unpaid work in households.

The proposed paper is devoted to presentation of the results of a special sociological survey on assessment of women’s unaccounted work realized in Ukraine. The main issues under investigation include: gender inequalities in time spent on domestic work, distribution of home duties and features of decision-making in households.

A particular emphasis is given to gender assessment of involvement to informal work, which makes a rather important problem in the region of transition economies. The role of prevailing gender stereotypes in reproduction of gender inequality is also analyzed based on data of the national sociological survey, as well as on the results of European Sociological Survey. The latter survey reveals a striking contrast between Ukraine and other countries of Europe in terms of public opinion on social gender roles and norms, in particular those related to women’s priorities in harmonizing their work and family obligations.

The paper provides also some analysis of gender policies realized in the country, and subsequent conclusions and recommendations on harmonization of gender disparities in paid/unpaid work balance and general empowerment of women in the country.