Missing women? The under‐recording and under‐reporting of women's work in Malaysia

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1564-913X.2014.00201.x
• Author: Anja Karlsson FRANCK,Jerry OLSSON
• Published date: 01 June 2014
• Date: 01 June 2014

International Labour Review, Vol. 153 (2014), No. 2

Copyright © The authors 2014

Journal compilation © International Labour Organization 2014

Missing women? The under-recording

and under-reporting of women’s work

in Malaysia

Anja Karlsson FRANCK* and Jerry OLSSON**

Abstract. Common methods to collect data on women’s labour force participation

frequently result in under-reporting and under-recording of their work. Based on

eldwork in Malaysia’s Penang state, this article presents some of the difculties

associated with recording women’s informal work. It contributes to theorization

on the under-reporting of women’s remunerative activities in ofcial surveys by ar-

guing that while women’s work is often devalued, under-reporting may also be the

result of women making strategic and pragmatic choices. By reporting themselves

as “housewives”, for example, they may avoid questioning their society’s gendered

norms while securing their own interests in work outside the home.

Ofcial labour force data are widely acknowledged to provide inadequate

coverage of women’s informal remunerative work.1 This shortcom-

ing stems from the denitions and conceptual categorizations of “work”, and

the way in which these are operationalized for data collection (Langsten

and Salem, 2008; McDowell, 1999; Standing, 1999). Normative constructions

around gender and work have important implications not only for how “work”

is dened (Benería, 1999), but also for the way data are assembled, how sur-

vey questions are phrased and the answers interpreted (Anker, 1983; Mata

Greenwood, 1999; Tomoda, 1985).

In this article, we share our experiences of the difculties associated with

recording women’s informal work and contribute to theorizing why women

do not report their remunerative activities in ofcial labour force surveys.

Throughout the article, we distinguish between the way women’s work is un-

der-recorded in surveys (by those administering the surveys) and the way it is

* School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, email: anja.franck@globalstudies.

gu.se. ** Department of Economy and Society, University of Gothenburg, email: jerry.olsson@

geography.gu.se.

Responsibility for opinions expressed in signed articles rests solely with their authors, and

publication does not constitute an endorsement by the ILO.

1 See, for example, Anker (1983), Bardasi et al. (2010), Benería (1999), Chen (2001), Chen,

Sebstad and O’Connell (1999), Ghosh (1999), Psacharopoulos and Tzannatos (1989) and Tomoda

(1985).