Time-use surveys highlight the unequal distribution of unpaid work between women and men, as well as help to understand the contribution of unpaid work to the national economy. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) place gender equality as a separate goal as well as an accelerator for all other goals. They call for recognizing, reducing, and redistributing unpaid care work as a way to promote gender equality. Much of unpaid work is performed by women, often resulting in unequal social, economic and political opportunities for women. When the data collected are analysed as evidence, it opens up policy dialogues towards a fair distribution of household and care-related tasks between women and men.  

Encouraged by the increased relevance of time-use statistics and the continuing challenges to their systemic collection, the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) commissioned a review of time-use surveys in Asia and the Pacific, including an update of the impediments to greater implementation by countries.  

It is our hope that this report will not only help increase much greater awareness among policy-makers and the statistical community in Asia and the Pacific on the importance of time-use statistics but that it ultimately leads to the increased production of harmonized time-use statistics, which can help monitor progress towards achievement of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda.