Dependence on unpaid female labour

A large part of female employment takes place at home in the agricultural and artisanal sectors in the Third World where the female, beside domestic duties, produces marketable goods which are sold by the males of the family. Domestic duties, largely unrecognized as economic activity, includes cooking, driving, cleaning, baby sitting, laundering and ironing. In the agricultural sectors, women plant, water, weed, harvest, process grains, preserve fruit and vegetables, and prepare animal products. In the artisanal sector, most of the output is actually provided by females at home. These include: pickles, home made sandwiches, pasties, pastries, sweets, desserts, home brewed beer, small loom textiles, rugs, towels, and tailored goods. The women who perform these jobs are, for the most part, unpaid, adding billions of dollars to the Gross National Product of every nation of the world.

The gap between men's and women's shares in household chores is still great. According to 1993 surveys, working women in Canada or in France still spend, on average, over four hours a day doing unpaid work at home, twice as much as men.