''Bargaining'' and Gender Relations: Within and Beyond the Household

Abstract

Highlighting the problems posed by a ''unitary'' conceptualization of the household, a number of economists have in recent years proposed alternative models. These models, especially those embodying the bargaining approach, provide a useful framework for analyzing gender relations and throwing some light on how gender asymmetries are constructed and contested. At the same time, the models have paid inadequate or no attention to some critical aspects of intra-household gender dynamics, such as: What factors (especially qualitative ones) affect bargaining power? What is the role of social norms and social perceptions in the bargaining process and how might these factors themselves be bargained over? Are women less motivated than men by self-interest and might this affect bargaining outcomes? Most discussions on bargaining also say little about gender relations beyond the household, and about the links between extra-household and intra-household bargaining power. This paper spells out the nature of these complexities and their importance in determining the outcomes of intra-household dynamics. It also extends the bargaining approach beyond the household to the interlinked arenas of the market, the community and the State.Bargaining Models, Bargaining Power, Gender Relations, Household Economics, Social Norms, Altruism,

Kinship institutions and sex ratios in India

“…Moreover, these traditional kinship institutions play a major role in determining the bargaining power of women, which in turn affect the health and economic welfare of women and female children of developing countries such as India (Agarwal 1994(Agarwal , 1997Folbre 1997;Miller 1981).…”

“…Because women marry into familiar kin networks rather than to strange families, they are likely to have more allies. Women's property rights are positively correlated with marriages in which women are in close proximity to their natal home, which is often the case in cross-cousin marriages (Agarwal 1994). While the underlying causes of cross-cousin marriages are complex, Agarwal (1994) has argued that cross-cousin marriages were an important means of keeping landed property within kin groups even if inheritance was matrilineal (ancestral property passes through the female line) or bilateral (ancestral property passes through both females and males).…”

“…The regional differences in inheritance practices also provided less access to property for women in the North than in the East and the South (Agarwal 1994). In North India, according to the customary Hindu inheritance laws found in the ancient legal treatises, the Dharmasastra and their commentaries, except for the succession of kings, inheritance was multigeniture rather than primogeniture.…”

“…For many scholars, the family and kinship systems, which often determine the rights of women in traditional societies, are the most likely factors for the historically persistent pattern of missing women (see Agarwal 1994;Das Gupta et al 2003;and Kishor 1993). In a well-cited paper, Dyson and Moore (1983) argued that the northern Indian kinship system based on village exogamy led to lower autonomy of women, lower age at marriage, higher fertility, higher childhood female mortality, and higher sex ratios.…”

Physical partner violence, women’s economic status and help-seeking behaviour in Dar es Salaam and Mbeya, Tanzania

“…Studies in the US have found that abused women who were employed were more likely to initiate divorce proceedings, go to the police or leave the relationship [9,13,21]. The emphasis on employment as the route out of abuse is, however, argued to be simplistic and culture and context are said to determine women’s ability to act on their behalf [22–26]. Instead, studies in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) have found education, rather than employment, to be the empowering resource enabling women to separate [11,14,25].…”