are not yet ready for market are reasons to respond affirmatively to the question when posed to men, but not when posed to women. This is particularly noteworthy with the women who were part of cooperatives growing crops for market. Even though this work occurs outside of the home and is clearly market-oriented, many of these women responded no to the question since they were not being paid until the crops went to market.

A key takeaway from this research is that surveys that aim to measure employment and work need to take into account local definitions of work, especially as relates to differences in gender norms. One especially important tool that has been shown to work in other settings is being diligent with follow-up questions and detailed activity lists. Results from the 2018 Honduran labor force survey suggest that using an activity list and separating the concept of payment from employment improves the measurement of female participation but is not enough to overcome the gendered definitions of work in rural Honduras. Lists need to be crafted to account for local activities – for example, production related to forest products and agricultural production related to vegetable gardens and poultry. In addition to updating the survey instrument to reflect local employment concepts, the training of interviewers should emphasize some of the challenges in measuring women’s economic activities given the overlap of economic and domestic activities.

This mismeasurement matters. Across the world, interventions are being designed and implemented to attempt to mitigate poverty through increasing economic productivity in agricultural and informal activities. A naïve look at the labor force statistics of these areas suggests that it is mostly men who are engaging in economic activities – and hence they who can best benefit from interventions designed to increase productivity. What does this imply for the communities that were interviewed in this study? It feeds a misunderstanding of women’s role as economically dependent rather than as economic agents, potentially limiting the extent to which interventions target their needs. Consider the case of the community in the study in which women collected and sold blackberries to market intermediaries. The interviews and focus group discussions with these communities suggested that this is an important yet seasonal source of household income where interventions could increase earnings from the activity, by connecting these groups of women directly to markets in the larger cities, for example. The extent to which this type of activity is invisible in the official statistics limits the inclusion of women’s activities in interventions designed to increase productivity.

Because mismeasurement has important policy implications and may not be fully addressed with survey modifications, it is important to encourage countries and other providers of economic statistics to report all types of work according to the ICLS 19 rather than focusing only on the headline indicators: labor force participation rates, and employment and unemployment rates. Rather, engagement across all types of work, including unpaid activities for own-consumption, should be included and discussed when designing interventions and policies.

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