Ghana embarks on its first time use survey

Addis Ababa , 09 April 2009 (ECA) - Ghana Statistical Service is hosting since Monday 06 April 2009, a mission from the Gender and Women in Development Section of the African Centre for Gender and Social Development (ACGS) in the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) to discuss the implementation of the first ever Ghana Time Use Survey.

Time use surveys provide important sex disaggregated data and information on how women and men, girls and boys spend their time between the two economic systems - market work and non-market household work.  To under­stand the economy properly, knowledge is needed of activi­ties that take place beyond the market work. Time use surveys are an important source of gender statistics and can offer a more accurate picture of the quality of life of the nation. People spend time producing goods and services, either in the paid work sector, or in the unpaid sector where they provide food, shelter and care for their families, friends and communities. Data from time use surveys portray the linkages and trade-offs between these different aspects of human activity. To a large extent, time use surveys can complement other social and economic statistics to enlighten policy makers.

However, in spite of progress made in time use studies elsewhere, African countries still do not have a comprehensive system to collect regular time use statistics. There is now a strong consensus at international community level that the lack of time use statistics in countries, from which to measure the value of unpaid work, is a significant data gap in statistical systems. The Beijing Platform for Action which emerged from the 1995 Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women called for the development of 'suitable statistical means to recognise and make visible the full extent of the work of women and all their contributions to the national economy, including their contribution in the unremunerated and domestic sectors'.

To address this issue, using the tools developed by its Gender and Macroeconomic Programme, UNECA in partnership with the GSS is launching the pilot phase of the Ghana Time Use Survey, as a modern, scientific and cost-effective way to generate timely and more accurate gender statistics of the unaccounted for household economy.

The main objective of the Programme is to address women’s and gender issues in Macroeconomic and poverty reduction policies and strategies in Africa by developing tools to measure and integrate unpaid work in national planning instruments and policies that speak directly to Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and other development frameworks and by building the capacity of national statisticians, national accountants, gender experts and policy analysts in using these tools.

The experts designed the sampling of the survey have already discussed methodological issues and will launch the training of field workers for the pilot survey on Tuesday 14 April 2008.  Twenty participants will benefit from the training session and will be deployed to both urban and rural areas for data collection. Upon completion, Ghana will be one of the fewer African countries to have undertaken to generate time use statistics for better policy formulation towards gender equality and sustainable development.