Zeszyty naukowe
Autor: Marta Hozer-Koćmiel 69
Strony: 69-84
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STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF FEMALE WORK TIME AND VALUE DISTRIBUTION

Summary

More and more often economic theories deal with human behaviour, both in the market and non-market sector. G.S. Becker, the author of the new household economy and of the economic approach to human behaviour, claimed that the economic choice theory would be much more useful if the non-market sector had not been excluded from the analysis. Thus, he pointed out the necessity to take non-monetary phenomena under consideration. The aim of this study is the quantitative analysis of regularities related to female work time and value in view of gender mainstreaming. In order to examine the distribution of the two categories several statistical methods have been applied. They were used to identify and measure the influence of selected demographic and economic factors on work time distribution in Poland in the period of 1976–2004. If the above mentioned aims are achieved, they will be the empiric verification of Becker’s thesis concerning the application of economic approach in the analysis of non-market behaviour and non-monetary phenomena. Two research hypotheses were constructed:
Hypothesis 1: In order to study female work time and value thoroughly it is necessary to include household work into consideration.
Hypothesis 2: The value of women’s household work exceeds the value of their market work. The study consists of four chapters.
The first one introduces the reader to the issue of female work with a special stress put on the division into the household and market work. The author explains the elementary terms related to the workforce market and presents selected work distribution models. Also, the chapter includes theories concerning sex discrimination and the principles of the new household economy.
The second chapter deals with the methodology of research on the time and value of work. The author presents chronosophic methods used by the CSO to study population time use surveys, as well as her own work time distribution indices. Then, some chosen value concepts are presented in the view of the value of market goods and services produced in the nonmarket sphere. Moreover, the methodology of household work evaluation is discussed where traditional evaluation methods are extended by a method of integrated female work value. In the next, third chapter an analysis is carried out of the influence of selected demographic and economic factors on the work time distribution. Potential influence factors include sex, a female life cycle, socio-economic group a household belongs to and an average salary. By introducing the term of sensu largo and sensu stricte types of entrepreneurship the analysis is made of the Polish women’s work time distribution in comparison to other Baltic countries. Calculation results are presented in the form of statistical tables and charts.
The fourth chapter is devoted to the value of female work in comparison with selected socio-economic problems. Also, a review of Polish and foreign studies on the value of female household and market work has been done. The author presents the structure and the drawbacks of the gross domestic product as the measure of social welfare. The chapter ends with the estimation results of the share of global female work value in the GDP and in those satellite time use surveys that include household work value. In the final chapter the dissertation on the distribution of time and value of female work is summed up. That includes conclusions of the quantitative analysis of regularities concerning the time and value of female work that has been carried out with gender mainstreaming in mind. Then the most powerful factors influencing the work time distribution in Poland in 1976–2004 are presented. It has been proved that the woman’s household work time is longer than her professional work time and that the value of her work in the household exceeds the value of her professional work. Therefore, in order to study the time and value of female work thoroughly, it is necessary to include into considerations the work performed in the household.