Major Activities of Gender and Macroeconomic Programme
ECA committed technical and financial resources to the actual implementation of its activities related to this major programmes and adopted to this effect a three-pronged strategy as follows: advocate to garner the support of African governments and partners to invest in unpaid work; develop tools to measure and integrate unpaid work in national planning instruments; and formulate policies that speak directly to MDGs. Key achievements are as follows:
I. Advocacy
The achievements in ECA's contribution to unpaid work followed the adoption by policy makers of a Ministerial Statement in 2002, Johannesburg, at the ECA's thirty-fifth session of the Conference of Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development. This Conference endorsed the recommendations of the Committee on Women and Development urging member States to increase the use of time-use surveys to measure and integrate unpaid work into national planning instruments as a step towards poverty reduction. This call was again made to African countries in an ECA/ADB Symposium, which brought together in 2004, Kampala, Uganda, 53 African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development to reflect on gender and development issues.
II. Development of tools for mainstreaming gender perspectives in national planning instruments and policies
Following the Africa-wide commitment by policy makers to support measurement and integration of gender perspectives and unpaid work into policy process, as a first step, ECA developed The Africa-specific Guidebook for Mainstreaming Gender perspectives and Household Production in National Planning Instruments and Policie s . It is a compendium of tools and methodologies to improve the skills of statisticians, national accountants and policy analysts in the collection, analysis and use of gender disaggregated data (GDD) for sound policy making, implementation and evaluation. This initiative is expected to improve the welfare of women, men and children by directing policy actions including programmes and resources to address gender-related household production obstacles to national development.
III. Introduction of continuous time use surveys in African countries
Using this compendium of tools that ECA has developed to provide a modern, scientific and cost-effective way to generate timely and accurate gender disaggregated statistics of the previously unaccounted for household economy, the Commission is currently in the process of introducing in six African countries a new round of annual time-use surveys (Cameroon, Djibouti, Ghana, Morocco, Uganda and Zambia). These surveys aim to produce two new statistical systems in addition to the existing core National Accounts - National Time Accounts (NTA) and National Satellite Accounts of Household Production (NSAHP) in ways that speak directly to all goals of millennium development in terms of implementation and MDG reporting . The surveys also provide data for the African Gender and Development Index (AGDI), a tool that ECA developed to assists African countries in assessing the progress they are making to reduce gender inequality.
( i) National Time Accounts (NTA) - National estimate of income and expenditure of time. A system of national time accounts would provide a basis for international comparisons and for greatly improved modelling of our economic and social systems. Two new sets of data follow from the regular estimate of sets of national time accounts: (i) Regular household Input-Output tables , which are the NSAHP ; and (ii) Regular estimates of GHP derived from NSAHP, equivalent of GDP in National Accounts.
(ii) National Satellite Accounts of Household Production (NSAHP) : National estimates of total value added of Household Production Based on NTA, ECA developed the first ever NSAHP for South Africa according to the recommendations of the UN Statistical Commission in the 1993 revision of the SNA. NSAHP is the main framework for integrating gender perspectives and unpaid work into policy process.
(iii) Gender-aware Micro-simulation and Macroeconomic Models : Using the NSAHP as the main database, ECA also developed these two types of gender-aware models to monitor MDGs and evaluate impacts of policies on poverty reduction and implementation of MDGs in African countries. The National Treasury in South Africa is the first country to accept and use the models in its economy-wide policy evaluation programme. Policy simulations using these models provide an introduction to and demonstration that the impacts of different macroeconomic policy shocks on the market work of men and women, domestic work, leisure, wages, income and welfare can be quantified. It is apparent that the analysis has generated important results and intuitions from which different conclusions can be made for policymaking depending on which policy variable is applied - an analysis that would be unnoticed in standard non-gender-aware models. The initiative demonstrates one practical approach for mainstreaming gender perspectives and unpaid work in national planning instruments and policies. This points to the policy need for African governments to: (i) officially recognize unpaid work as part of the total national economy to be measured and integrated into the System of National Accounts; and (ii) reforming the national statistical system to introduce regular time use studies and other household surveys to generate vital gender-disaggregated data on unpaid work for strategic planning and policy analysis to identify more equitable and sustainable development options. Overall, these initiatives are expected to improve the welfare of women, men and children by directing policy actions including programmes and resources to address gender-related inequalities to achieve pro-poor growth.
NTA are a set of estimates of our total income and expenditure of time similar to the estimates of national income and expenditure, which account for our market transactions in monetary units.
NSAHP are sets of accounts derived mostly from National Time Accounts developed as an expanded version of the central national accounts to provide an overall picture of the production activities of households and to give an estimate of the value of household production ensured mostly by women
