Change of mindset imperative: speakers
Undervaluing women’s unpaid care work is directly linked to poverty, domestic violence and is a barrier to women’s empowerment, speakers at a discussion said yesterday.
Mentioning that the reason for this undervaluing is embedded deep in social structure, attitude and everyday practices, they stressed on rearranging infrastructure for reducing and redistributing the time and effort women put into unpaid care work at home.
Manusher Jonno Foundation (MJF) and Citizen’s Platform for SDGs, Bangladesh organised the dialogue at Brac Centre in Dhaka, said a press release. The focus of the dialogue was: Addressing unpaid care work for women’s empowerment and implementation of SDGs.
Moderated by Shaheen Anam, executive director of MJF, members of national and international NGOs, UN organisations, CSOs, research institutes and academicians attended the discussion. Banasree Mitra Neogi, gender advisor of MJF, presented a keynote speech at the event.
Speakers mentioned that there is no specific information on women’s domestic work except the “Time Use Survey 2012” by Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS).
The BBS study showed that on average men spend 5 percent while women spend 25.8 percent of their time on domestic work.
Another study titled “Estimating women’s contribution to the economy 2015” revealed that on an average, a woman works about 7.7 hours on non-SNA (System of National Account) activities on a typical day.
In his concluding speech, Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya, distinguished fellow of CPD and convenor of the Citizen’s Platform for SDGs, Bangladesh highlighted the importance of changing mindset, which is important to address and recognise women’s unaccounted work.
“It is the unaccounted work of women that underpins society’s well-being, social development and economic growth,” he said.
Dr Nazneen Ahmed, Senior Research Fellow of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies; Dr Tania Haque, Professor of the Department of Women and Gender Studies, Dr Salma Akhter, Professor of the Department of Sociology and Dr MM Akash, Professor of the Department of Economics at Dhaka University also spoke at the session.
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