Role of Time Use Data in Policy Making: Valuing Women’s Time and Care Work 

In “Valuing Women’s Time and Care Work: A Synthesis Report on the Data-to-Policy Link,” Mayra Buvinic, Maria S. Floro, and Kelsey Ross analyze the influence of Time Use (TU) data on care policy in Kenya, Mongolia, Senegal, and South Korea. Utilizing research findings from the Care Economies in Context project, the authors are able to identify linkages between TU data and care policy, but warn that policy uptake may be narrow, superficial, and/or fragile. Therefore, the authors call on policymakers and researchers to invest more time, energy, and resources into building out robust data-to-policy infrastructures.

Maria S. Floro is Professor Emerita of Economics at American University (AU) in Washington DC, and a researcher with the Care Economies in Context project.

Citation

Buvinic, M., Floro, M. S., Ross, K. (2025, March). Valuing Women’s Time and Care Work: A Synthesis Report on the Data-to-Policy Link. https://data2x.org/resource-center/role-of-time-use-data-in-policy-making-valuing-womens-time-and-care-work/

Introduction

The report emphasizes the historical neglect of care work in policy discussions, primarily as it is unpaid and predominantly performed by women. The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the importance of caregivers, leading to a renewed focus on measuring this work. In 2013, labor statisticians internationally agreed to include unpaid work in labor surveys, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) further emphasized the need to sex-disaggregate this data. While a growing number of countries implement TU surveys, the record to date on their uptake is substandard. Despite their uniqueness and richness, the findings of these surveys are most often underutilized in the design or evaluation of
public policies.

The authors propose a framework that identifies factors influencing the uptake of TU data in policymaking. This framework considers the processes of policy formulation and decision-making, indicating that the effective use of data requires an interplay between high-quality data production, stakeholder engagement, and enabling socioeconomic and political environments.