Women's Work : a living lab

Rapid field-level survey to measure women's paid and unpaid work in society.

Updated by UN-OICT Analytics on November 18, 2016

Project repository

Project Objective

This project aims to implement a toolset and experimental methodologies for measuring precisely the daily activities of individual (volunteer) women. The project will design a “living lab” leveraging big-data originating from:

  • Wearable computers (watches, wearable chips, etc.)
  • Big Data resulting from mobile phone usage,
  • Interactions with 3rd party (financial transactions, etc.)

This is done in support of Sustainable Development Goal 5, which seeks to “Recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work [..] and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate”

“Living labs” are often used in developed countries to understand social behavior towards new policies and products. This project attempts to develop a set of tools and methodologies which are also suitable for living labs in developing and least-developed countries.

Useful resources

Deliverable 1) As an initial deliverable, the project will focus on implementing a methodology to survey a large population sending randomized text messages (sms).

Deliverable 2) Further deliverables are expected to make use of wearable computing devices and sensors or other connected “things” (see Internet of Things or IoT), as well as data from financial transactions.

Useful resources

Project Team

**The project is seeking partners for:

  • survey design and
  • technology platform for implementing SMS surveys
  • wearable computers, sensors, Internet of Things
  • financial technologies**

American Mothers

The InfoSeeking Lab at the School of Communication & Information - Rutgers University

Dr. Chirag Shah - Rutgers University
Associate Professor of Information Science
Affiliate member of Computer Science

This team is advised by staff members from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs who provide background as well as detailed information on the expected work and objectives.