ABSTRACT
The economic role of women in home production has been widely recognized by social scientists, notably economists, anthropologists, and sociologists, as well as by women leaders in both the developed and the developing countries. Note, for instance, that the UN World Conference held recently in Nairobi marking the close of the Decade for the Women has recommended, among other things, that the services rendered by women in the household, in home production, be included in the national income accounts so that a country's estimates of gross domestic product (GDP) do not exclude the value of such services. 2 In low income countries where production in the household and production for the market are highly labor intensive, the value of work-at-home often represents a significant addition to family income and welfare, in fact, as pointed out by T.W. Schultz (1974), much more significant than that in the high income countries.
