All About Intra Household Bargaining
In this edition, we focus on how intra-household dynamics contribute to gender differences in the society and how research on these can be leveraged to empower women.
[Note : Due to some errors and omissions, we are resending the current edition. Apologies about this and we promise, no future double emails!]
Before we begin, we are thrilled to introduce our Board of Advisors! Over the past 2 years, we have grown to a 1700 member community, creating an inclusive space for women to learn and network in the economic development and policy space. As WiEP continues to grow, the Board of Advisors will be a guiding light in our mission for the future and we are so excited to build the organisation with these inspiring women!
No gender based policy can function in economic silos, without taking into account social and cultural norms within households, villages and communities. The impact of unequal power dynamics in private spheres on policy making is often underestimated.
Households are a key economic unit to understand decision making, division of labour and agency between two parties - usually a male and a female. They are more often than not, the starting points of gender differences and strongest gatekeepers patriarchal norms. Women in the household often lack the agency to make decisions in their ability to work, travel, finance for children’s care and education or even making any menial purchases. This gendered difference in decision making comes with a human development cost, which translates to low bargaining power at the hands of a woman.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Goal 5 calls for ‘the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family.’ In this month’s edition we see the evolution of household bargaining models, key elements and ongoing research about gender differences within households.
As always, the newsletter contains job postings shared on our WhatsApp groups.
Happy Reading!
Best,
The Newsletter Team
How did it all start? Contemporary Models to Modern Approaches!
A number of economists have in recent years proposed alternative models embodying the bargaining approach. 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 affect bargaining power? What is the role of social norms and social perceptions in the bargaining process? How might these factors themselves be bargained over? 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.
Here is a comprehensive UN document, which provides guidelines for measuring intra-household Power and Decision-making. This document talks in detail about the existing models and indicators and eventually provides recommendations for further work.
Determinants of Intra Household Bargaining Power
This paper reviews literature on the factors that affect the allocation of food to adults in South Asian households. It is found that at the intra-household level, food allocation was determined by relative differences in household members’ income, bargaining power, food behaviours, social status, tastes and preferences, and interpersonal relationships. A clear policy implication of differences in bargaining power is the program benefits being differentially distributed within households of different socioeconomic status. Hence, the targeting of welfare programs can be improved by focusing on certain determinants.
This thesis investigates the factors that affect women’s bargaining power within the household, in India. The first chapter introduces the literature on household bargaining mostly by describing how household outcomes like children’s health indicators and expenditure pattern change with increase in resources under women’s control.
This paper aims to study the four major determinants through which bargaining power between men and women in the household could be examined. To study these determinants, the data of 250 domestic workers across five Indian cities has been gathered. The data aims to analyse the socioeconomic position of domestic workers by studying their profile and their role in children’s education and their marriage and on the spending in the households.
Impact of Unequal Intra Household Bargaining
This study examines the impact of women’s household bargaining power on the improvement in children’s welfare in Ogun State, Nigeria. The bargaining power is investigated with respect to one important household decision in rural India: female labor supply.
This paper elicits causal effects of spousal observability and communication on financial choices of married individuals in the Philippines. It was found that men whose wives control household savings respond more strongly to the treatment and women whose husbands control savings exhibit the same response. Changes in information and communication interact with underlying control to produce mutable gender-specific outcomes.
This document talks about how inequality with respect to resource allocation within a household aggravates female poverty as compared with what could be deduced from the general household based poverty measures.
Outcomes of Increased Women’s Decision Making Power
In this paper, the authors use data on whether a husband or wife in the Health and Retirement Study (USA) "has the final say" when making major decisions in a household. They find that decision-making power depends on plausible individual variables and also influences important household outcomes, with the second set of results much stronger than the first set. Current and lifetime earnings have significant but moderate effects on decision-making power. On the other hand, decision-making power has important effects on financial decisions like stock market investment and total wealth accumulation and may help explain, for example, the relatively high poverty rate among widows.
In this paper a model is developed in which conflicting interests prevent effective communication between spouses about the costs of child-bearing incurred by women. An intervention is designed to vary exposure to information about maternal health costs to either husband or wife among approximately 500 couples in Lusaka, Zambia. One year after the intervention, households treated with information on maternal risk experience a sizeable reduction in the probability of pregnancy but only when the information is delivered to wives rather than husbands is this decline in fertility accompanied by a significant reduction in transfers to the wife. These patterns are consistent with differences in initial beliefs and demand for children generating a barrier to credible communication between spouses.
This brief illustrates the findings from a number of projects funded by the Women and Girls at the Center for Development (WGCD) initiative through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The projects described here explore the gender dimensions of intra household bargaining and decision-making and chart empowerment outcomes using changes in decision making. Through this brief it is evident that investing in resources alone is neither necessary nor sufficient to increase women’s agency.
Job and Internship Openings
Note: These are jobs shared by members over WhatsApp over the last 2 weeks. Please check if positions are still open before applying. If you are thinking about applying to one of these, you can also drop a message on the WhatsApp group or on the google group to connect with members currently working in these organisations.
Job Openings
Precision Development is hiring for various Research Manager and RA positions in India, Ethiopia and Kenya. Details can be found here.
The Development Data Lab is hiring for two positions - Data Scientist and Pre-Doc in Development Economics.
IIM-Calcutta is hiring Research Managers and Research Executives or its Building Roadmaps for Industrial Decarbonisation and Green Economy (BRIDGE) Initiative urgently.
Sewa Sarvekshan is hiring a Data Collection Associate, more details can be found here.
Internship Openings
J-PAL South Asia is hiring a a research intern to support their Gender Norms for Adivasi Women project. More information can be found here.
Arkadev Ghosh (Post-doc, Briq institute), Gareth Nellis (Asst. Professor, UCSD), Matt Lowe (Asst. Professor, University of British Columbia), and Prerna Kundu (PhD Student, University of British Columbia) are seeking qualified applicants for the position of Research Intern for a study that seeks to examine the role of residential camps in creating a sense of group identity and social solidarity among young men in India. Details can be found here.
This newsletter was put together by Ridhi, Ridhima and Amruuta.
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