A Framework for the Analysis of Family Planning
on Women's Work and Income

Summary

Family planning and population researchers have devoted considerable attention to studying the determinants of women's fertility and family planning use. There is a large body of information on the effects of timing, spacing, and number of pregnancies on infant health and a growing body of literature on maternal health outcomes. Yet, until recently, there has been little emphasis on the economic, social, and psychological consequences of family planning use and the pace of childbearing on women's lives. While it has been assumed that family planning programs have beneficial consequences for women's lives, there has been little research that evaluates the impact of family planning on women's personal, social, or economic conditions.

This conceptual paper focuses on women's economic activities, an area in which family planning use may have significant influence. In addition, economic activity is an area of vital importance to the well-being of women, their children, families, communities, and society as a whole. In this paper, we describe a framework for the analysis of family planning, specific to women's work and income.

Because use of family planning may have short-term and long-term effects on women's economic activity, this paper presents separate frameworks for modeling both influences. These frameworks have evolved from the Hong-Seltzer framework and the Women's Studies Project framework.

Background on women's work

When exploring any dimensions of women's work, it is important to consider these factors.

• Women constitute roughly half the world's population, but worldwide, their official work force participation rates are lower than those of men. Global labor force participation of women is estimated at 42 percent, and women comprise one-third of the total paid labor force. These statistics conceal the true extent of women's work since much of their work is invisible. In reality, women have three productive roles. They are producers of goods and services (paid or unpaid), reproducers of people and labor in the household, and organizers of community activities. Official statistics, however, typically record only paid, economically productive work.
• Women's economically productive work is underrepresented by official statistics. The reasons for this phenomenon lie in attitudes towards women's work and the nature of women's work. Women's economically productive work tends to be devalued by their family members, by official recorders of information, and by women themselves. Their work is often not considered "real work." Surveys may stop probing on women's work if women respond that their main activity is housework.
• In examining the mean percentages of women and men in the labor force in the six emphasis countries of the Women's Studies Project, we found the percentages of women ranged from 9.2 percent in Egypt, to 36 and 38 percent in Indonesia and the Philippines, to a high of 45 percent in Zimbabwe. Most working women in Egypt, Brazil, and Bolivia are in the service sector, whereas the vast majority of women workers in Zimbabwe are in the agricultural sector. In Indonesia and the Philippines, women's work is more equally distributed between agricultural and service sectors. In all six emphasis countries, the smallest percentage of women are employed in industry, and, except for Indonesia and the Philippines, smaller percentages of women than men are engaged in industry.
• During the past 20 years, statistics on labor force participation trends in developed countries reveal a steady increase in women's employment, which has been partially offset by declines in male employment rates. A similar trend has been found in many developing regions, including Latin America.
• Women are also increasingly becoming heads of households, due to increasing rates of divorce, separation, widowhood, single parenthood, migration and displacement by war. Often women have sole economic responsibility for their children and/or elderly relatives.
• Evidence indicates that women's lives are a "zero-sum game," where women are likely to sacrifice leisure in order to make up for increases in reproductive or productive work burdens. This is true particularly where women work multiple jobs and engage in market work as a matter of necessity rather than choice.
• Women worldwide are paid less than men for comparable market work. Statistics from manufacturing show women's income relative to men's ranging from lows of 41 percent and 50 percent in Japan and Korea to highs of 89 percent in Sweden and 97 percent in Egypt. For countries that have data on relative wages of men and women for skilled (salaried) and unskilled workers, the wage gap is greater for skilled than for unskilled workers.
• In households where both women and men earn wages, the men's incomes are usually higher than the women's, yet women usually contribute a larger proportion of their income (and sometimes a larger absolute sum) for pooled household expenditures. Recent studies have shown a striking difference in the proportion of their earnings that men and women devote to meeting basic family needs. In many settings, women's earnings are more likely than men's to go toward children's food, health care, and schooling.

Family planning and women's work: a conceptual framework

It is important to distinguish between characteristics of work that meet the practical needs of women and those that meet their strategic interests. The former provide women with the means to fulfill immediate wants, such as increased income through more hours of work. The latter address the systemic causes of poverty and want, such as discriminatory wage and hiring practices, lack of job security, and lack of access to credit, labor unions and markets.

The use of family planning may further women's practical needs by allowing them to join the labor force and to work more hours. It may also address women's strategic needs by qualifying them for jobs with a greater degree of security and more chance for job advancement. In addition, it may allow women to increase their work skills. The effect of family planning on women's labor force participation, and consequently, on women's lives, may depend upon the kind of work as well as the context in which it is done. Increased participation, or increased hours of work may not necessarily lead to an increase in women's welfare and could lead to a decrease in their overall quality of life.

The most common representation of the relationship between work and fertility uses fertility and/or contraceptive use as the dependent variable and work as the independent variable. The reverse direction is usually ignored. Researchers focusing on the United States and other developed countries have considered the impact of family planning on work, usually as a simultaneous relationship. In general, there are few studies that try to sort out the temporal ordering and causal direction of work and fertility.

The conceptual frameworks presented in this paper specify the time frame of family planning, childbirth and employment decisions with separate frameworks for the long-term and the short-term effects of family planning decisions. Both short- and long-term models use a sequential and comprehensive approach to explore the effects of family planning use upon work.

Among the independent variables we consider are: family planning use, pregnancy and lactation, birth intervals and family size. Among the dependent variables: work status characteristics, such as type of occupation and place of work. Underlying and control variables include women's characteristics, such as marital status and education; household characteristics, such as income and assets and partner's education; and community characteristics, such as urban or rural setting.

These frameworks suggest that the use of family planning can help women meet their practical needs by allowing them to join the labor force and work more hours. It can also address women's strategic needs by allowing them to choose jobs with a greater degree of security and more chances of job advancement. Labor force participation can have beneficial and detrimental effects on women's lives, depending on the nature the work, demands on women's time, and other individual and contextual factors. The Women's Studies Project is supporting research in developing countries that can empirically examine the relationships described in this paper.

-- Eilene Z. Bisgrove
-- Meera Viswanathan

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