Diapositiva 1

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Engendering economic statistics

• Women and economics
• household, enterprise and decision-making bodies
• Cristina Freguja, Stefania Cardinaleschi, Lucia
  Coppola, Sara Demofonti
• Istat

Global Forum on Gender Statistics, Rome, 10-12
December 2007
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Introduction
Economics has traditionally been a male-dominated
sphere and the gender dimension has been absent
in economic statistics and analysis Lack of
data, standard for surveying, comparable
sources.. ...but also simply to look at the
available data without a gender perspective
preclude to draw up a detailed outline of womens
contribution to economics A growing informative
demand is emerging in this domain and
consequently gender statistics have to face new
challenges
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Introduction

• Challenges
• Use of a gender perspective in data analysis
• Enrichment of existing data sources with gender
  specific information
• Integration of available data sources
• Development of new surveys
• Some examples
• womens contribution to the household income
• womens participation in enterprises
• womens representation in economic
  decision-making bodies

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Household income
Data and Methods
EU-SILC 2004 provides standardized information at
individual and household level about income and
living conditions for Austria, Belgium,
Denmark, Estonia, Spain, Finland, France, Greece,
Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, and
Sweden We consider Married and cohabiting
couples, composed by partners aged 25-54
years Partners earnings
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Household income
Research questions
To what extent dual-earner model is spread in the
EU countries? In dual-earner couples, women
contribute as much as their partners to the
household economic needs? Which individual and
household characteristics are more likely to be
associated with dual-earner couples? Among
dual-earner couples, which are the
characteristics associated with womens levels of
contribution?
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Household income
Data and Methods
We define and compare 1) man sole provider
couples VS. dual-earner couples 2) man main
provider (woman earns less than 40 of the couple
earnings) equal providers (woman earns
between the 40 and the 60 of the couple
earnings) woman main provider (woman
earns more than 60 of the couple earnings).
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Household income
An Overview
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Household income
Lowest of man sole provider Denmark, Finland,
Norway, Sweden (lower than 10 )
Highest of man sole provider Spain,
GreeceLuxembourg, Italy, Ireland (higher than
30)
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Household income
Man Sole Provider vs. Dual Earner Couples

• ANALYSES
• Logistic regression
• Household and individual characteristics
• partners age and age difference
• partners educational level and
  
  educational level difference
• type of union (i.e. cohabitation or marriage)
  number and age of children
• economic level of the household

• FINDINGS
• the dual-earner model is more likely to be
  associated with
• highly educated women
• women more educated than their partners
• cohabiting couples
• without children in pre-scholar age
• medium high levels of household income

When comparing the association between household
and individual characteristics and the
dual-earner model, the North-South difference
noted in the distribution of dual-earner couples
among EU countries disappears
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Household income
An Overview
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Household income
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Household income
Man Main Provider vs. Equal Providers
Woman Main Provider vs. Equal Providers

• the woman main provider model is commonly
  associated with
• highly educated women,
• women more educated than their partners
• the poorest quintiles of the income

• the man main provider model is commonly
  associated with
• low educated women
• women less educated than their partners
• presence of children, especially if in
  pre-scholar age

More convenient when the woman has not invested
much in human capital, and her specialisation in
domestic activities becomes extremely worthy for
the presence of young children.
For a woman, becoming the main provider, might be
not only the result of high investments in human
capital, but also of the need for supporting
household economics.
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Enterprises

• An appropriate combination of results from
  different data sources may provide evidence of
  relevant gender dynamics
• Study by ISTAT on women entrepreneurs (2001)
• Data from
• Industry and Services Census carried out in
  1997,
• Labour Force survey
• Multipurpose survey on Everyday Life

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Enterprises

• only a quarter of enterprises were managed by
  women and their enterprises were generally
  smaller and concentrated in services to families
• women-run enterprises were less integrated into
  the market they made fewer agreements, received
  and requested fewer orders, had lower average
  yields and smaller sales-costs ratios
• 53,3 of entrepreneur or self-employed women
  worked more than 60 hours per week, when
  considering work both within and outside the
  family the same percentage for men was 26 (on
  average, men and women work respectively 54 and
  64 hours)
• BUT
• smaller proportion of time devoted to the
  enterprise by women, in spite of a higher total
  number of hours worked (58.5 of male
  entrepreneurs work 46 hours and more per week,
  while only the 40.6 of female entrepreneurs do
  so)

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Enterprises
The activities inside and outside home lead to
double burden, and the overload of work prevents
female entrepreneurs from dedicating
appropriately to their enterprises The situation
does not seem to show signs of important
improvements in last years The results from the
Labour Cost Survey (LCS) carried out in 2004,
that for the first time collected information on
the sex of the entrepreneur, confirm that the
women-run enterprisers play a role that is still
secondary respect to the mens ones Results from
the time budget survey show a persistent
asymmetry between the commitment of women and men
in terms of familiar work, even if we can observe
that participation of men to the domestic work is
slowly increasing The workload inside home
continues to have a big relevance in explaining
the reality of women-run enterprises
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Economic decision-making
The last twenty years have seen a huge increase
in the number of women participating in the labor
force almost everywhere and in all
sectors but the womens representation at a
decision-making level is much lower then mens in
major institutions The participation of women
in high level economic decision-making is
fundamental to give women and men an equal share
of power and influence in policy making
processes This is not only a demand for simple
justice or democracy but can also be considered
as a necessary condition for women's interests to
be taken into account (Beijing Platform, 1995)
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Economic decision-making
Economic decision makers are those who
occupy institutional positions in decision-making
bodies, they are actively involved in the
deliberation and determination of economic
policies and they are responsible for
implementing them on behalf of the State or the
institution they represent Economic decisions
made by either private or public
actors, determine both present and future
economic performance and assets, with obvious
implications for everyones daily life
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Economic decision-making

• Aims
• Adoption of adequate measures on the basis of the
  most appropriate monitoring indicators
• Institutionalization of formal requirements to
  collect and provide data by sex
• National Statistical Institutes responsible for
  pre-testing and revising the data collection
  instruments, designing and supervising the data
  collection process as well as the data validation
  and analysis

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Economic decision-making
Indicators
Developed by the EU Italian Presidency to
measure the representation of women and men in
economic decision-making bodies
The proportion and the number of women and men
among

• Governors and deputy/vice-governors of the
  Central Banks
• Members of the decision-making bodies of the
  Central Banks
• Ministers and deputy ministers/vice-ministers of
  the Economic Ministries
• Presidents and vice-presidents of the Labour
  Confederations
• Total governing bodies of the Labour
  Confederations
• Presidents and vice-presidents of the Employer
  Confederations
• Members of total governing bodies of the
  Employer Confederations
• Chiefs of executive boards of the 50 top firms
  publicly on the national stock exchange
• Members of executive boards of the 50 top firms
  publicly on the national stock
• exchange

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Summarizing
New challenges are emerging for official
statistics at international level 1. look at
the available data in a new perspective as an
instance, an appropriate analysis of EU-SILC
based on a couple perspective, allows for
understanding the interrelationship between
partners and the balance between gender
roles 2. enrich existing data sources with
pertinent variables and integrate different data
sources for example, as far as the enterprises
are concerned, countries should collect sex
disaggregated data about the entrepreneurs,
collect information that allow to highlight
critical aspects women have to face to measure
the contribution of women work in the household,
by attributing an economic value to the familiar
work 3. carry out new surveys for instance,
referring to the economic decision-making bodies,
it would be very important to guarantee the
collection of data through the National
Statistical Institutes, adopting a set of
indicators able to measure the representation of
women and men in this domain.