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Homes Divided: The Population Council, New York
Homes Divided: The Population Council, New York
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0 1989 Pergamon Press plc
World Development,
Vol. 17, No. 7, pp. 979991,1989.
Printed in Great Britain.
Homes Divided
JUDITH BRUCE*
The Population Council, New York
Summary. - This paper reviews social inequalities
between men and women, exploring how
they are played out among intimates within the household.
Evidence is presented that households
do not constitute a unified economy. Examples are provided of the tensions that exist between
partners
over life course decisions,
including the use of income. In diverse cultural settings,
mothers typically contribute
the whole of their earned income and devote other resources they
control to meeting the households
basic needs. Knowledge
of how women use their earnings
provides another rationale beyond that of productivity
and justice for giving special attention to
womens livelihoods,
1. INTRODUCTION
2. SEEKING
APPROPRIATE
MODELS
HOUSEHOLD
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tive constructs
of household
dynamics may be
more apt. Nash, for example, and Manser and
Brown promote
the notion
of a bargaining
household
in which members formally contend
and exchange to gain their individual ends.* BenPorath proposes a transactions
framework which
views family relationships
as contracts between
individuals
of different generations
or between
conjugal pairs.3 Individuals mediate external risk
and uncertainty
through exchanges
with family
members.
Amartya Sen characterizes
this intrahousehold
bargaining and transaction
as cooperative
conflict. According
to Sens interpretation,
individuals within the household
contend,
but in
many cases cannot bargain in the precise sense of
this word because individual utilities may overlap
in some areas,
because
perceptions
of selfinterest and self-worth
are indistinctly
defined
(by self and others an issue of extreme
importance
to women),
and finally in poor
economies,
because
the ends to be attained
are often fundamental
elements
of survival,
not simply utilities
such as satisfaction
or
pleasure.4
Folbre has been one of the most articulate
critics of unitary
household
constructs.
She
identifies
altruism
within
the family
as an
element of both the New Household
Economics
and evolved Marxist approaches
and asks, Why
are both the neoclassical
and the Marxian paradigms so silent on the issue of inequality within
the home? Folbre concludes that it is entirely
inconsistent
to argue that individuals
who are
wholly selfish in the marketplace
(where there
are no interdependent
utilities) are wholly selfless within the family where they pursue the
interest of the collectivity.
The propositions
and critiques
of Nash,
Manser and Brown, Ben-Porath,
Sen, and Folbre
seem reasonable,
and certainly most people who
are members of families have experienced
differences of opinion over how money and other
resources
are spent. Why then has the unified
household
been such an attractive formulation?
The first powerful
reason is the simplicity
of
consolidating
individuals into households
which
are assumed to behave as a unit, in contrast to
considering
the economic
behavior
of more
numerous
individuals.
Unified
households
are
convenient
policy tools.
A second point of resistance to adopting more
complex theories of household
operations
is the
fear that these will not bring with them explanatory powers far beyond that of the current unified
model. Does the discovery of conflict among the
households
multiple decision makers make any
difference if the outcome is still predicted by the
HOMES DIVIDED
and interests
the intimacy
are unlikely to
of family and
981
employment
worldwide.
In addition to the generally accepted observation
that much of their
productive
work is uncompensated
by wages,
their hourly earnings in sectors like manufacturing compare unfavorably
to mens. As reported
in a survey of nine developing countries, women
earned between 50 percent (South Korea) and 80
percent (Burma) of the wages of men who are
comparably
employed.13
A review
of rural
womens income conducted by the International
Labor Organization
reveals that women sometimes earned as little as one-third to one-fifth of
the wages earned by men for work of equal or
greater difficulty.14
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HOMES DIVIDED
-that
of long-term and daily spatial separation;
men and women
literally
move in different
worlds. Plausibly coping with economic downturns necessitates
an increasing segmentation
of
household members experience,
and this is one
reason poverty may intensify age- and genderbased inequalities.
Thus, the recent school of
analysts
exploring
household
survival
strategies may find that what appears to be an
adaptive, even a finely tuned balancing of household resources,
is actually the uneasy aggregate
of individual survival strategies.
4. CONFLICT
COOPERATIVE
IN HOUSEHOLDS,
AND OTHERWISE
The literature
reviewed
above establishes
a
widespread
inequality between men and women
in assets, income, and social norms and obligations. This inequality crosses the threshold of
the household and is an institutionalized
feature
of many intergenerational
family relationships
and marital
partnerships.
We contend
that
women bargain to improve their position within
these frameworks.
Further,
it seems to be the
case that, for mothers,
a primary goal of this
bargaining - beyond reasonable
personal survival - is to maximize the channeling of income
and other resources to the benefit of their children. Yet, the literature admits a striking variety
of visible and invisible bargaining
styles and
implicit and explicit contracts. It is not clear how
readily
women
perceive
their
dilemma
or
whether
they acknowledge
the arrangements
under which they labor as contracts. Finally, do
women
consciously bargain
or exchange
to
achieve ends?
Sen assigns a high value to perception itself as
one of the important
parameters
in the determination of intrafamily
divisions and inequalities. He argues that if a woman undervalues
herself, her bargaining position will be weaker,
and she is likely to accept inferior conditions. Sen
contends
that outside
earning
can provide
psychological
and practical leverage for women
by offering them a better fallback position should
negotiations
break down (e.g., through divorce);
an enhanced
ability to deal with threats and
indeed to use threats (e.g., leaving the house);
and a higher perceived
contribution
to the
family economic
position
by them and
others.24
The others to whom Sen refers include not
only husbands,
but also common-law
partners,
parents, in-laws, patriarchs of their own or other
lineages, siblings, and children. The currency on
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HOMES
5. ALLOCATION
OF INCOME
DIVIDED
985
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DEVELOPMENT
6. A LINK TO POLICY
(a) Individualized income streams
Understanding
individual
income
streams
within the household
is analytically
important
for deciphering
the determinants
of economic
change at both the upper and lower ends of the
economic spectrum. When monitoring the health
HOMES DIVIDED
981
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market
village
economy
or extra-village
employment.54
Thus, as Jain observes, there is an interplay
between the familial and extrafamilial:
The
scene of womens advancement seems to be the
household and . . the households perception
and evaluation of womens role, its hierarchy, its
monetary and nonmonetary sources of power.
But key in changing the dynamics within the
household are extrafamilial experiences which
permit women an opportunity to see themselves
differently, to become discomforted with their
subordinated status, and empowered to confront
and transform the aspects of family and income
relations that oppress them. Women may need to
become strengthened even beyond this point to
effectively use direct and bilateral strategies of
negotiation rather than less risky and often less
effective unilateral or indirect means.56 What
remains to be detailed is how women transit to
consciousness in their income relations with
intimates,
and what strategies they employ
preferentially.
HOMES DIVIDED
989
7. CONCLUSION
The policy message of this chapter may distill
down to the proposition that selected individuals
within households rather than households themselves should be the objects of economic outlays,
whether income transfers or wage-earning opportunities. Cultural designation of some obligations
as male or as female, as the responsibility of the
father or the mother, especially points to the
appropriateness of directing allocations to specific individuals. In cases in which it is determined
that resources that come into the household may
be used unproductively vis-a-vis the well-being
of target groups, allocations
of aid might
be directed to women outside the household.
Womens collective action groups, cooperatives,
and savings unions can be regarded as possible
mechanisms to protect income and other resources for use in meeting critical needs.
Policies that earmark individual recipients for
aid rather than the household as a unit are not
necessarily discordant with the goals of family
maintenance or strengthening. In fact, insofar as
adult men have been designated as heads of
household and have served as de facto individual recipients of development allocations,
this proposal is not a radical departure. Moreover, the precise delineation of recipients may
lead to more effective channeling of scarce
resources and reinforce, in a positive sense,
differentiation regarding areas of responsibility
that indigenous households already make.
We have seen that men and women are
distinctive in their economic access, and similarly
have distinct self-interest within the.family. We
have found that male and female goals within
nuclear and intergenerational
households are
typically pursued through institutionalized
inequalities,
rather than through cooperative
plans. We predict an increasing sub-nuclearization of families to the mother-child unit. We
argue for attention to these facts in pursuit of
equality and economic progress. Certainly, the
information presented here suggests that to the
many fault linesm along which social changes are
monitored, the economic condition of male and female within the same household should be added.
NOTES
1.
Becker (1981).
2.
3.
Ben-Porath
(1980).
4.
5.
21-27.
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7.
Recchini
8.
Joekes
de Lattes
and
Wainerman
DEVELOPMENT
(1981).
(1987a).
Mukerjee
(1985).
11.
King
Evenson
12.
Acharya
13.
Sivard
(1985).
14.
Ahmad
and
Loufti
15.
Todaro
and
Fapohunda
16.
Mason
17.
Cain
(1977).
18.
King
and
19.
Hill and
20.
Folbre
21.
Jain
22.
Hoodfar
23.
Schmink
24.
Sen (1985),
paragraphs
25.
Munachonga
(1988).
26.
Greenhalgh
(1988).
27.
Wolfe
(1988),
28.
Pessar
(1988).
29.
Pahl
30.
Safilios-Rothschild
31.
Fapohunda
32.
Roldan
33.
Jones
(1983).
34.
Engle
(1986).
35.
Kumar
p. 9.
(1980).
(1988),
(1988).
(1977).
36. Horton
and Miller (nd.);
(1981); Tripp (1981); Carloni
Emmert
(1977); and Blumberg
Mencher
38.
Nelson
39.
Guyer
(1988).
40.
Young
(1987).
41.
Maher
(1984).
42.
Leslie
( 1987).
43.
Engle
(1986),
44.
Wilson
45.
Engle
46.
Kennedy
47.
Senauer
48.
Blumberg
49.
Conti
50.
Hanger
51.
Safilios-Rothschild
52.
Sanday
( 1988).
53.
Jain
(1984).
54.
Acharya
55.
Jain
56.
Falbo
and
(1983).
Bennett
and Taj
(1982).
(1988),
(1985),
(1987)
(1987).
Evenson
Stafford
(1983).
(1983).
(1980),
p. 229.
p. 251.
p. xiii.
21-27.
p. 193.
p. 5
p. 153.
p. 245.
37.
and
(1988).
Knudsen
and Yates
(1987); Benson
and
(1986).
(1988).
(1981).
p. 181.
p. 3.
(1981).
(n.d.),
p. 2.
(1987),
(1988),
p. 10.
p. 20.
(1988).
(1979).
and
Morris
(1973).
(1982).
(1974).
(1974);
SEWA
and
(1985),
and
(1975);
Bennett
(1983).
p. 8.
Peplau
(1980).
Chen
(1984).
HOMES DIVIDED
57.
59.
Richter (1988).
58.
Furstenberg
60.
et al. (1983).
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