This paper proposes a measurement for housekeeping activities, which play an enormous role in the reproduction of life and in the well-being of society. These housekeeping activities are ignored in economic theory, which neither values them nor accounts for them in the Gross Domestic Product measures, as far as they are not associated with an equivalent flow of monetary revenue. A plausible interpretation for this non-consideration derives from the historical discrimination, in most societies against women, to whom the carrying out of housekeeping activities has been delegated. Ignoring housekeeping activities reinforces the concept of invisibility, which characterizes domestic labor and the inferior role of women in society. With basis on usual procedures to estimate goods or services not measured by economic statistics, and using demographic and social statistics from the National Survey through Household Samples (PNAD), which since 2001 inquires about the time spent in doing domestic activities, we find that housekeeping activity corresponds on average to 11,2% of Brazilian GDP of 2001-2005 period.
Housekeeping activity; National accounts; Invisibility of female work
