COUNTING AND VALUING WOMEN’S WORK IN SRI LANKA: USE OF NATIONAL TIME TRANSFER ACCOUNT METHODOLOGY TO ADDRESS GENDER-BASED INEQUALITITES

This study is an extension of the previous work on the National Transfer Accounts (NTA) of Sri Lanka carried out in 2021. Since the NTA did not include a gendered analysis, this study employed a novel methodology developed by the ‘Counting Women’s Work Project’ which uses System of National Accounts (SNA) data and non-SNA data for examining market production and household production by gender across the life cycle. Such an analysis has not hitherto been done in Sri Lanka and thus this study can be regarded as pioneering work. The use of National Time Transfer Accounts (NTTA) data is very important for Sri Lanka from the sustainable development perspective specifically SDG 5 (to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls) and SDG Target 5.4 (to ‘recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate). It is expected that this study will be an eye opener for the policy planners and political authorities to open up more and more decent employment opportunities for women and also create an environment for them to move away from already burdened domestic work and unpaid care work at the household level.