Anker Research Institute Working Paper Series | Number 9

Sally Smith, Richard Anker and Martha Anker

ABSTRACT

This paper explains how a gender perspective is embedded into the Anker Methodology for estimating a living wage. This is important for transparency and for ensuring that users of Anker Methodology living wage and living income estimates and other interested parties understand the approach. Gender-related measures in the Anker Methodology include: basing the living wage estimate on a reference family which has one adult in part-time employment, which allows time for unpaid care work during regular working hours; considering gender issues when estimating food costs, such as including extra calories for women during pregnancy and allowing for less than perfect shopping and food preparation to limit the time required for these activities (which are mostly performed by women); allowing for purchase of prepared foods and food eaten away from home, which reduces the burden on families and especially women; ensuring adequate ventilation of smoke from cooking to protect the health of women and girls especially; and ensuring sufficient funds for education to at least secondary level for all girls and all boys, including nursery and pre-school costs when they are common in the study location.

This paper also discusses conceptual and methodological issues related to including care costs (particularly childcare costs) in living wage estimates. While the Anker Methodology takes the position that there can be only one living wage for an area and not separate living wages for different household compositions and sizes, as this would encourage wage discrimination based on marital status, or parental status, or family size, this paper discusses the Anker Methodology approach to paid and unpaid care work and draws attention to the fact that, in many locations, families with young children and lone-parent families may be vulnerable to poverty, even when adults in these families earn a living wage, due to high care needs relative to incomes. As such, in some locations there may be a need for additional support from the private sector, government, and others (such as NGOs) to enable these types of households to achieve a decent standard of living.