The new international statistical standards have important implications for measuring the activities that women and men undertake, not least because they make a clear distinction between “employment” which is defined as work performed for pay or profit and “work” which includes household chores and production for own consumption. The Women's Work and Employment Partnership (WWEP) is a joint effort of the World Bank, the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and Data 2X. The WWEP is focused on operationalizing new international definitions – approved at the 19th International Conference of Labor Statisticians (ICLS) – of work and employment that recognize all productive activities, paid and unpaid—which has major implications for how women's work is measured. The results will inform the formulation of guidelines for the measurement of employment, unemployment, and labor underutilization in household surveys.
The World Bank conducted methodological experiments and piloted data collection in Ghana ( see working paper) and Malawi to inform the operationalization of the new standards and is currently conducting a methodological study in Sri Lanka (jointly with the ILO and the Sri Lanka Department of Census and Statistics).
The World Bank is also conducting research on improving the measurement of individual and poverty. A summary of this work can be found in chapter 5 of the 2018 Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report. In addition, the World Bank will test traditional recall- and diary-based methods to collect time use data using household survey experiments.
