Women in economic activity: Lessons from two surveys in Costa Rica and Kerala

The international standards on the measurement of the economicaly active population, employment, unemployment and underemployment, adopted by the 13th International Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLS) in 1982, present some important changes with respect to earlier standards. This paper concentrates on the measurement of women's economic activities. Working women are in general more difficult to identify than men due to the type of work they are engaged in and their role as homeworkers. The results obtained from two ILO methodological surveys carried out in Kerala, India and Costa Rica in 1983, show that these standards improve the measurement of women in economic activity, particularily when an activity list is incorporated into the questionnaire to detect persons engaged in production for own consumption, and the seeking work criterion for measuring unemployment is relaxed.