'She Helps Me All the Time' : Underestimating Women's Economic Engagement in Rural Honduras
This study aims to understand women's engagement in economic activities in rural Honduras and why these activities may not be accurately reflected in official statistics. The study finds that women underreport their engagement in economic acti...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2020
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/188221587483023913/She-Helps-Me-All-the-Time-Underestimating-Womens-Economic-Engagement-in-Rural-Honduras http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33638 |
| Summary: | This study aims to understand
women's engagement in economic activities in rural
Honduras and why these activities may not be accurately
reflected in official statistics. The study finds that women
underreport their engagement in economic activities,
including production for own consumption, production of
market goods, and remunerated services and commerce.
Simulations suggest that the rural female labor force
participation rate in Honduras is likely to be
underestimated by 6 to 23 percentage points. Two main
explanations are found. First, women identify themselves
(and are identified) primarily as housewives, and the
concepts of housework and employment are taken as mutually
exclusive. Second, given this duality between housework and
employment, women define "employment" based on a
set of necessary characteristics that exclude many of their
own activities. Specifically, work needs to (i) be conducted
physically outside the home; (ii) be in exchange for money;
and (iii) entail sufficient time commitment. Importantly,
these conditions are not binding constraints for men to
identify their own activities as economic activity. These
results have implications for understanding the low labor
force participation of women in rural communities in
countries beyond Honduras, suggesting that low rates obscure
a significant amount of economic activity in many countries. |
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