Reframing the Measurement of Women’s Work in the Sub-Saharan African Context

Abstract

This research note considers how we measure women’s work in the sub-Saharan African (SSA) context. Drawing on qualitative work conducted in Burundi, the note examines how existing measures of women’s work do not accurately capture the intensity and type of work women in SSA undertake. Transcripts from qualitative interviews suggest that women think of work to meet their roles and responsibilities within the household. The women in the interviews do not frame work as a career or a primary activity in a time-use allocation. As a result, researchers need to nest questions regarding women’s work within surveys that ask about roles and responsibilities within the household, and about how women meet these responsibilities with a financial component.