Women’s unpaid work deserves respect and fair recognition

As per a recent survey report made public on September 9, in Bangladesh, unpaid work overall was valued at Tk 670,000 crore in 2021, which was equivalent to 18.9 percent of the country’s GDP.

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Of that work, women performed 85 percent ~ equivalent to Tk 570,000 crore or 16.14 percent of GDP. The survey was conducted by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) and UN Women Bangladesh, with support from the global Women Count programme and technical assistance from the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The survey, the first ever Household Production Satellite Account (HPSA), drew on data from the Time Use Survey 2021 and Labour Force Survey (LFS) 2022.

The report follows on the pledge made bythe current governmentin the FY2025-26 budget to integrate unpaid labour into official GDP calculations. However, this is the result of many years of advocacy and lobbying by women’s and development organisations to monetise women’s unpaid work and give it a formal recognition. This is a landmark step in favour of millions of women who perform essential services yet remain out of the national accounting system.