e areas of reproduction and employment in particular.
We have all heard the statistics which emanated from the UN Decade for Women, that women do two thirds of the world's work yet earn less than 10 per cent of its wages, grow 50 per cent of the world's food yet own only one per cent of its land and productive resources. Women also do almost all the world's domestic work and provide more health care than all the organised health services put together - again for little or no remuneration, Yet how much do we really appreciate the value of all the work which women do?
Globally, women are overwhelmingly responsible for the work which is involved in maintaining human resources: childbearing and rearing, care of elderly and ill individuals, the growing, processing and preparation of their family's food; fuel and water collection and home maintenance. Collectively this labour is referred to as 'reproductive labour', which usually includes subsistence agriculture and the production of goods for own consumption rather than exchange. It is separated from 'productive labour' which includes all production of goods and services for sale or exchange. Public management and decision-making responsibilities are often included under productive labour, or are separated out for consideration on their own. In the gender division of labour, men are considered to be 'naturally' suited to productive and management roles, and women 'naturally' suited to reproductive tasks. While the specific content of reproductive work varies between societies, an important common feature is that it does not carry with it the entitlement to an independent income. As a result, women must undertake additional work if they need to generate an income, or they must become dependent for income transfers on those who are largely free of any responsibility for reproductive labour, namely men. Women-headed households, estimated at slightly more than 25 per cent of households in Ghana,19 may have very limited options. There is a great need to study what happens to young unmarried girls who get abandoned by putative partners soon after they get pregnant or after delivery, a situation of increasing frequency in our cities and towns.
The private nature of reproductive labour and subsistence agriculture, as compared to the public nature of formal sector employment and export agriculture where men dominate, contributes to the invisibility of women's work. This invisibility has led to a cultural bias that keeps women in a position of inferiority. National statistics and surveys do not reflect the real contribution of women to the economy. It is understandably difficult to measure the value of goods and services that are never exchanged for money. But part of the problem also lies with the bias inherent in current methods of data collection, which reflects the dominant male bias in our societies in the definitions of work, economic activity or place of employment. Making women count will require more sophisticated investigatory methods and tools to analyse the true place of women in the economy and the value of their productive and reproductive roles. Let us look more closely at the value of women's unpaid work.
Misperceptions about reproductive labour and 'housework' are common throughout the developed and developing worlds. Housewives are assumed to work fewer hours than men in formal employment, and to work more slowly and less strenuously than many workers. Most people believe that housework has little productive value, yet no family could live as well or cheaply as it does without the unpaid services of a housewife. Purchasing cleaning, cooking and child-care services can be very costly. Replacing home-grown food with purchased food can be both costly and in many cases less nutritious. John Kenneth Galbraith characterized the housewife as a 'crypto-servant' to both her family and the economy because her economic contribution was un-recognized.20 Box 2.3 of the 1990 UNDP Human Development Report entitled "Women count - but are not counted" is worth noting in this respect.
