Published: 06 Oct 2016 Source: University Relations Office (URO)
The Department of Economics, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) has held a dissemination workshop dubbed ‘’Measuring the Distribution of Remunerated and Non-Remunerated Work among Men and Women in Ghana.’’ The workshop which was held at the conference room of the Department of Economics on the 3rd October, 2016 was aimed at counting the work of women.
Dr. Gretchen Donehower, Project Director of Counting Women’s Work (CWW), stated that women’s contributions were left out of the national data used for policy development.
Dr. Daniel Sakyi, a member of the research team of CWW Ghana, established that a greater proportion of women were engaged in unpaid work and this was due to the fact that traditional division of labour always assigned women to household production. Dr. Sakyi stated that the objective of the research was to estimate the amount of time men and women spent on domestic work, compare the time spent on market production for men and women and also identify the differences in the time spent by both genders. Data was collected randomly from a list of areas where individuals aged 10 years and above were interviewed, diaries were given and their daily activities recorded.
Sis. Dr. Eugenia Amporfu, the leader of the research team said that after the National Transfer Accounts (NTA) and National Time Transfer Accounts (NTTA) were combined, it was found out that in an entire lifecycle, women dominated in household work while men dominated in paid work. Thus, women spend more time in productive work than men do. The team recommended that the education of women/girls to higher levels should be encouraged so as to enhance their chances for paid work. They also proposed a change in gender roles in our societies.
Dr. Akosuah Darkwah, a sociologist and a senior lecturer at the University of Ghana supported the recommendations by the team and proposed a clear definition of work.
Mr. Joseph Donkor, a representative of the Regional Minister, was intrigued by the exposition as he was enlightened on the contributions of women in households. He urged that research of such great value should be made available to policy makers.
Counting Women’s Work (CWW) is a team that looks at the work of women and operates in nine (9) countries all over the world. The Department of Economics is fortunate to have five (5) of its researchers being part of CWW Ghana Team. The researchers who were involved in the research were Sr. Eugenia Amporfu, Dr. Daniel Sakyi, Dr. Prince B. Frimpong, Dr. Eric Arthur and Mr. Jacob Novignon.