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Human development front

Pakistan fares better

than India

NEW DELHI: United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in a report has lauded Pakistan for its human development and ranked it above India.

The report released here on Thursday said Pakistan has done better than India on human development front.

Meanwhile the report said a staggering dollar sixteen trillion (T) is missing from the global economy every year.

According to the UNDP 1995-report this estimate includes the value of the "unpaid" work performed by men and women and the underpayment of women's work in the market at prevailing prices.

Of this dollar 16 trillion, dollar eleven trillion (T) is "invisible contribution of women," the report says.

The underevalution of women's work not only undermines women's purchasing power but it reduces women's already low status in many countries as well as their right to own property and acquire credit from financial institutions.

Dr. Mahbubul Haq, former finance minister of Pakistan, who authored the report, says " there is an unwitting conspiracy on a global scale to undervalue women's work and contribution to society. If women's work was accurately reflected in national statistics, it should shatter the myth that men are the main bread winners of the world."

The study analysed the amount of time women and men spend on "paid and unpaid" household and community work in thirty-one countries across the world -- classified as industrial, developing and transition economies. The key findings of the study include "women work longer hours than men in nearly every country. Of the total burden of paid and unpaid work, women bear an average of fifty-three percent in developing countries and fifty-one percent in industrialised countries."

In industrial countries roughly two-thirds of women's total work burden is spend on uppaid activities, and a third on paid activity.

For men the shares are reversed. In developing countries, two-thirds of women's total work is spent in unpaid labour. But less than a quarter of men's work is unpaid. In nine developing countries women work thirteen percent more than men.-APP