0305-750x/89

$3.00 + 0.00
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,

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 most pressing
basic human needs of the
household.
The building body of knowledge
of
the particular destination
of womens earnings is
presented
to provide another rationale beyond
that of productivity
and justice for giving special
attention
to womens livelihoods.

1. INTRODUCTION

Womens earned income and their ability to

stretch this and other resources
is vital to the
survival of many households.
Women pursue
personal goals, as well as simple survival, in the
context of stronger forces: segmented
and discriminatory
labor markets for which they are illprepared; powerful family systems that use them
as instruments
for patriarchal
or kinship ends;
discriminatory
customs
and laws surrounding
divorce and widowhood;
inheritance systems that
deprive them of assets or undermine
their legal
rights; and norms that confine womens roles to
the production
and the nurturing of dependents.
Men and women in the same cultural setting
and class group and family have very
different prospects in life. The contrasts are often
dramatic, in their participation
in labor markets,
the content of their work, the returns to their
labor, the pattern of economic participation
over
the lifecycle,
daily time use, and parenting
responsibilities.
Womens possibilities
for finding adequate
livelihoods,
retaining assets, and
maintaining
their social status when marriages
dissolve, whether through separation,
abandonment, migration,
or death, are often markedly
poorer than mens.
In this paper we review these societal inequalities between men and women. We explore how
these inequalities are played out among intimates
within the household,
presenting
evidence that
households
do not constitute a unified economy,
but several often competing
economies.
Examples are provided of the tensions that exist between generations
and between
partners
over

2. SEEKING

APPROPRIATE
MODELS

HOUSEHOLD

Bearing in mind the contrast between male and

female experience,
we must reappraise
various
theories
which treat the household
as a unit.
Many modern constructs of household
behavior
prominently
that of the New Household
Economics - tend to separate gender dynamics
at the micro level from the known society-wide
dimensions
of gender differentiation
and asset
distribution.
These theories are deficient because
they fail to acknowledge
intrahousehold
negotiation over assets and possibly severe inequalities within households.
Internal
conflicts
are
ignored and a single overriding
decision maker
(benevolent
or otherwise)
is proposed.
The empirical evidence suggests that alterna*This paper draws in part on the introduction
to A
Home Divided:
Women and Income in the Third
World (Stanford,
CA: Stanford
University
Press,
1988). Special thanks to Caren Grown for thoughtful
editorial advice.
979

980

WORLD

DEVELOPMENT

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

unified household model? An increasing number

of studies
have found that unexpected
and
unproductive
outcomes
of development
efforts
are best understood
in light of intrahousehold
conflicts of interest.6 What explains the agricultural production
project which simultaneously
raises household incomes, leads women to withdraw labor on their key cash crops, or results in
declines
in nutrition
and other welfare
indicators? Differences
between households
do not
explain these effects fully; womens particular
roles in production
and income
use provide
powerful clues.
A third reason for adopting a unified household model is that the research
required
to
describe lively intrahousehold
bargaining
is demanding.
Defining the household,
let alone
detailing the dynamics of internal resource allocation, can be daunting. Yet, by the same token,
standard survey methodologies
oversimplify
and
distort family dynamics by mechanically
identifying adult males (when present)
as heads of
household.
The adult male as designated
head is
often exclusively interviewed
about sources and
overall levels of household
income. His welfare
is often taken as a proxy for the welfare of
all household
members.
But, as will be shown
shortly, this may be an inaccurate representation
of reality.
Fourth,
the assumption
that households
behave as economically
rational units is not only
analytically simpler to handle, but suits practical
tastes as well. Policy makers in both industrialized and developing
countries
often prefer to
direct resource flows and benefits to the household as a unit or to the nominal household head.
They avoid the issue of internal
distribution,
possibly assuming it will prove difficult to develop mechanisms
to deliver benefits to specific
individuals
within households.
Finally, a strong cultural bias also supports the
analytic and practical
impetus
to consolidate
individuals into households.
The family, especially the marital relationship,
is viewed as a
sanctum which is protected
from the conflicts
that characterize
virtually all other social institutions. This bias, though comforting,
is also
incorrect. Since mens and womens access to and
control over resources differ systematically
in the
wider world the external
world of income
relations - why would their personal economies
be served by a common
groundplan
in the
internal world of income relations? In the following sections,
we review some of the recent
literature on adult mens and womens social and
economic
experience.
This review shows how
profound is the distinction between the male and
female spheres; we argue, therefore,
that mens

HOMES DIVIDED

and womens needs

fully accord within
marriage.

and interests
the intimacy

are unlikely to
of family and

3. MENS AND WOMENS

CONTRASTING
LIVES
(a) Economic contribution
In recent years, it has become important
to
document what women contribute
to family and
society through household
and market production. Over the last 30 years, there has been a
steady upward
trend in the participation
of
women in the labor market in developing
countries. Though still afflicted by the serious problems of underenumeration,
the official rate of
female labor force participation
in developing
countries
in 1985 was 32 percent.
A more
important
fact to consider
is that the rate of
growth of womens labor force participation
since
1950 has outstripped
the rise in male workers by
two to one.
Apart from this, it has been established
that
womens
compensated
labor combined
with
household
production
renders them substantial
and sometimes
predominant
economic contributors in all developing
regions of the world.
This is true even in parts of Asia where cultural
prescriptions
mask womens
productivity.
In
recognition
of the generally severe problem of
undervaluation
of womens productive
activities
in Asian national accounts, Krishna put forward
a three-step methodology
- parallel in approach
to that routinely used to estimate income generated in unregistered
or unorganized
sectors - to
assess womens economic input to the national
product. Using a similar methodology,
Mukerjee estimated
that Indian women contribute
exclusive of their services as housewives
- 36
percent
of Indias net domestic
product.
A
detailed time allocation study in the Philippines
determined
that, although mothers contributed
only 20 percent of market income, their contribution to full household
income was about 38
percent.
Acharya and Bennetts intensive study
of 279 households
in eight villages in Nepal
concluded that when both subsistence production
and market production
are considered,
women
despite
having over two-thirds
less cash
income than men - contribute
15 percent more
than men to full household
income.*
Women subsidize economic progress in at least
four ways: through their underemployment,
their
unemployment,
their willingness
to go in and
out of the labor market, and their low wages.
Women
carry the major share of part-time

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

(b) Fertility decision making and

the demand for children
In pursuing their life course, women may seek
a balance between two areas in which they have
high stakes and little freedom of choice: increasing their access to income and assets and obtaining the desired
timing,
number,
and sex of
children.
Despite
the obvious dissimilarity
in
male and female reproductive
risk and parenting
responsibilities,
fertility
decision
making
has
often been studied as a household-level
phenomenon.
However, innovative analysts such as
Todaro and Fapohunda
are beginning to apply
Ben-Poraths
transactions
framework
to the
question of which intrahousehold
processes influence fertility decisions. They state, We begin
by assuming that during the reproductive
lifetime
of the conjugal unit, each spouse examines his or
her individual experience,
benefits, and personal
expenditures
associated
with alternate
family
sizes in order to arrive at a specific perception
of
personal reproduction
goals.
They go on to
detail salient aspects of the implicit husband/wife
contract
in three communities
in Nigeria and
project their influence on fertility behavior.
Mason and Taj have identified four aspects of
the reproductive
experience
in which mens and
womens experience contrasts, particularly in the
most traditional
societies. l6 These dimensions
are: (1) the risk of morbidity and mortality associated with pregnancy,
birth, and lactation an exclusively female experience;
(2) the social
and economic
costs of child rearing;
(3) the
likelihood
of gaining the benefits
of children
because of inheritance patterns and sex bias; and
(4) the way in which children may enhance either
partners
position
socially and in the family,
potentially
increasing
the dominance
of one
partner over the other. The alignment of these
four factors may argue for either more or fewer
children for men or women. In reviewing the

982

WORLD

DEVELOPMENT

reasons women may wish to have more children

than men do, Mason and Taj define situations in
which female fertility goals exceed mens especially
the desire for sons as a hedge
against risk and insecurity. Cain describes, at the
extreme
end of female dependence,
womens
range of choices in rural South Asia, as these
occur in contrasting
villages in Mymensingh,
Bangladesh,
and in three states of India Maharashtra,
Andhra
Pradesh,
and Madhya
Pradesh.
In Bangladesh in particular, womens
access to income-earning
opportunities
is severely limited; their legal inheritance
rights are
generally
forfeited;
their chances of becoming
widows (because
of age differentials
between
spouses at marriage) are a near certainty; divorce
and abandonment
are realistic possibilities;
and
control of women by patriarchal
structures
is
extreme. Many Bangladeshi
women must reproduce to survive. Sons are especially
valuable;
they are long-term
risk insurance,
and widows
maintain
a stake in their deceased
husbands
property largely through sons productive
activities and status.
Even when men and women
agree on a
preferred number of children, the factors behind
these choices are likely to differ. Childbearing
and rearing is a far more powerful determinant
of womens
life course than mens, Further,
womens role in childbearing
and rearing generates other fundamental
distinctions
between
womens life experience
and that of men.

(c) Time use

Gender-differentiated
time use occurs from
early childhood
through old age. Fairly consistently, women in all parts of the world work more
hours (paid and unpaid) than do men of the same
age. Most critically, becoming
a parent has a
significant effect on womens time use and little
on mens,. For certain developing
societies, data
indicate
that additional
children
reduce
the
already little amount of time a man spends in
child care, while typically erasing leisure and
reducing the sleep time of women to a biological
minimum.a The tenacity of this gender-differentiated system of time use is most striking when
one considers middle-class
couples in industrialized countries where both spouses are full-time
members of the work force, and where substitute
child care during the parents work hours can be
purchased.
Based on a study in the United
States,
Hill and Stafford
conclude
that the
overall impressions
[are] that college educated
women make substantial re-allocations
of time to
direct child care
. . that they sacrifice personal

free time and sleep to avoid an excessively large

reduction in market hours. Overall the time use
response of men to the presence of children in
the household
is minor.
Let us return for a moment
to the new
household
economics
model
as depicted
by
Folbre.
Under
this theory,
she states,
The
economic rationality
of the household
unit further extends to decisions about family size which
are influenced by changes in the price of children
due to increases
in production
costs such as
education and opportunity
time devoted to child
care. O Time use data suggest that the decisions
about these tradeoffs
are not taken by the
household,
but rather almost exclusively by the
mother who balances the conflict between market work and child care by reducing sleep and
leisure.
Comparative
information
on male and female
time use raises another question about the degree
to which men and women do different things at
different
times of the day, and how tasks are
shared (if at all). If we analyzed individual time
use at a distance, not knowing that the personalities under study are members
of the same
household,
and viewed time use, like monetary
investment
as an economic
choice, we would
likely conclude that men and women belong to
distinct social and economic groups, and sometimes would have difficulty regarding
their behavior as cooperative
or even linked.
Does this segmentation
of experience
affect
mens and womens perceptions
of themselves,
their partners,
and the transactions
between
them? Jain suggests that it may. In Tyranny ofthe
Household, she states that in poverty, lives by
necessity get acutely segregated
both in space
are
and in task, and to that extent , perceptions
limited to personal experience.
If this is so,
men and women in some poor households
have
less opportunity
to plan and live cooperatively
than those in better-off
households,
because of
the stress of fulfilling essential,
but distinct,
responsibilities.
Hoodfar, writing about life in a
low-income neighborhood
of Cairo, contrasts the
male world of coffee shops, movies, and work
away from the neighborhood
with the confined
and impoverished
environment
of the women,
who may not leave the small geographic territory
of the district during their entire lives. Mens
outside world can claim a sometimes
substantial portion of their earnings and may loosen their
personal and social contracts to provide materially and emotionally
for their immediate
famThis description,
when combined
with
ilies.
what we know of the increasing migration worldwide of men and women,
suggests
an often
forgotten dimension of male/female
differentials

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

983

which we focus most closely is income. Yet there

are other valued but less negotiable currencies the bearing of children, education and training,
social networking,
household-based
production
-that
determine womens position in the family
and wider society and their ability to achieve
their desired ends. Detecting
womens implicit
lifetime contracts and strategic position requires
careful qualitative
research that looks both laterally and vertically at the family system.
Munachonga
examines income allocation and
control systems within changing marriage forms
in the emerging middle classes of urban Zambia
and finds women must be innovative in their use
of kin networks. She suggests that most women
will seek status and security - however uncertain - through marriage. Even then, the wageearning
wife finds that her traditional
work
obligations
toward her husband have been reinterpreted
in the urban context to mean that the
husband
owns her earnings.
Traditional
obligations to kin are factored into an equation that
is reformulated
in modern terms. For example,
she recounts a story of one couple in her sample
who called in representatives
of each of their kin
groups when either spouse bought
a major
household item . . . to explain who had bought
and therefore
owned the item.25 All this continues to be necessary because current ordinance
law does not provide women with property rights
in case of divorce.
Greenhalgh
describes how Taiwanese parents
create differential contracts with male and female
children.26 Male children are bound by a longer
and somewhat
looser contract
of obligation.
They must achieve and earn over the long term to
support and honor their aging parents. Females
leave the family at marriage and so must repay
their debt for nurturance
and education
before
they are absorbed into their husbands families.
Greenhalgh
contends that this system has operated in the presence of modern educational
and
employment
opportunities
to increase girls educational attainment
and their participation
in
formal wage labor, but that it has not resulted in
an increasingly
autonomous
younger generation
of females. Rather, she argues that the participation of young women in export-oriented
production
lines is a modernized
version of an
older family strategy that increases the value of
sons contributions
to parents by using the income generated
by their sisters to pay for and
prolong the sons education. Within the currently
observed
intergenerational
contract,
womens
earning opportunities
give them little new power
and perhaps
have served to subjugate
them
longer if not more severely.
Wolfe discusses
a contrasting
case in Java

984

WORLD

DEVELOPMENT

where a bilateral kinship system assists daughters

in making more autonomous
decisions
about
whether to work and how to use the earnings.
She finds that daughters had various and indirect
ways of balancing parental approval with factory
employment.
In the ideal they were to ask
parental permission
beforehand,
but the most
common way was to apply for positions
first,
receive a job, and then ask parental permission.
The community
she studied was very poor, thus
she expected the remittances
from the factory to
be diverted to the family economy. However, she
found a high degree of income retention
rather
than income pooling. Unlike their Taiwanese
counterparts.
who turn over 50 to 80 percent of
factory wages to families, these Javanese factory
daughters
control their own income, remitting
little if anything from their weekly wages to the
family till and often asked their parents for more.
Most participated
in rotated savings associations
through which they accumulated
substantial sums
of capital. That money was used to buy their
clothing, consumer goods for the household,
and
was made accessible
for parents
for lifecycle
events (birth,
death,
circumcision,
marriage),
emergencies,
and debts.*
Pessar reveals the intricacy
of negotiations
over return migration
between spouses in Dominican Republic migrant couples to the United
States.** The value of the new social context,
opporincludes
expanded
earning
which
tunities for and an increased measure of monetary control by women, is clearly perceived
by
women, who are reluctant
to return home in
many cases. Among other indications of womens
expanded
power, Pessar documents
a profound
change in budgetary
allocation patterns in Dominican households
after migration. The conflict
over this changing authority resulted in 14 US
divorces among the 55 women in her sample.
Wives new interests are to build their personal
stake in the United States and to delay their return home, while husbands stress the importance
of saving (Five dollars wasted today means five
more years of postponement
of the return to the
Dominican Republic).
Men also look forward to
returning to the home country with the elevated
status of direct producer or owner of a business.
Pessar
calls into question
the gender-blind
models of migration
that focus on household
behavior and fail to inquire into the interplay of
male and female interests.
These examples point up the many life course
decisions in which male and female interests fail
to accord. There are also different
degrees of
conflict; they reveal a substantial
territory
between cooperative
households
(as insisted upon
by some household models) and the open conflict

allowed to emerge in bargaining or transactions

models.
Beginning with mildly uncooperative
households, the literature on family monetary arrangements provides evidence of a lack of mutuality in
that adult partners
generally
have incomplete
information
about each others earnings. In both
industrializedz9
and developing
societies,
husbands frequently
minimize their wives income
contribution;
women on their side are often
deliberately
kept uninformed
of the husbands
earning
and spending.
Safilios-Rothschild
explored
the basis of income
relations
in the
context
of agrarian
reform in Honduras
and
found the women generally ignorant of the mens
earnings and that the majority of men underestimate their wives economic contribution,
a finding that should be of great interest to surveyors
who rely on a single informant for data on family
income. Safilios-Rothschild
sees a tendency to
minimize
womens
contribution
as part of a
larger strategy to uphold the ideal of the male
breadwinner,
which in turn validates the broader
system
of sexual
stratification.
The greater
womens earnings are relative to mens, the more
likely they are to be underestimated.
However,
women themselves find it notoriously
difficult to
report their earnings accurately because of their
irregularity and the form they take; thus, to some
degree, women collaborate
in the obfuscation
of
female contributions.
Fapohunda
investigated
income arrangements
in three socially different Yoruba communities
in
Nigeria. She considered
shared information
on
income a precondition
for effective income pooling and joint expenditure
planning.
She found
substantial
risks for each spouse associated with
revealing income or unreservedly
collaborating
in joint financial arrangements.
Based on evidence of mens and womens
individualized
income strategies in each of the three societies
the challenge
studied, she states, Theoretically,
to social scientists is
. to consider the characteristics
and functioning
of heterogenous
nonpooling
domestic units, perhaps viewing the
household
with a unified budget as a special
case.31
Occasionally
the literature
provides dramatic
and explicit examples of negotiation over money.
Roldan studied 140 Mexico City women who
worked as garment
and textile industry piece
workers
in their own homes.
She reports,
Family interaction is fraught with friction. Forty
of the 53 wives studied reported
very frequent
discussions
and quarrels
over shortages
of
(as husmoney, wives faulty administration
bands put it), childrens discipline, and husbands
drinking, unfaithfulness,
and jealousy. Violence

HOMES

was frequent, and surprisingly, 32 of the wives

thought their marriage was a failure. Half of
them had separated at one point or another in
their married lives. 32 In her 1983 study of the
Simri irrigation program in the Gambia, Jones
defined a different linkage between domestic
violence and income relations.33 Her research
illustrated womens rational response to monetary incentives for their labor. Women reduced
labor on crops for which they were not justly
compensated,
Jones reported, but could not
withhold their labor altogether for fear of beatings from their husbands.

5. ALLOCATION

OF INCOME

These vignettes illustrate considerable tension

in households over the use of income and other
valued resources. However, whether expressed
through inadequate sharing of information, incomplete pooling of income, or open violence,
what difference do intrafamily disputes over
resources make? When are these contentions
and conflicts of social policy interest? Confining
ourselves primarily to negotiations over uses of
income between formally married or consensual
adult partners, the data suggest at the very least
some important differences in the destinations of
mens and womens income, and their tendency
to withhold income for personal uses.
A central impetus to womens earning attaining a better life for their children, which
many women view as an extension of good
mothering34 - may explain the allocational
priorities they apply to their own income and
other income that they control. Though difficult
to research, a considerable body of information
has been compiled on this subject in the last
decade. Kumars 1977 study in Kerala, India,
indicated that a childs nutritional level correlated positively with the size of the mothers
income, food inputs from subsistence farming, and the quality of available family-based
child care.35 Significantly, childrens nutritional
level did not increase in direct proportion to increases in paternal income. An expanding number of recent studies and project evaluations in
Jamaica, St. Lucia, Ghana, Kenya, Botswana,
Sri Lanka, and another multi-village study in
Guatemala strongly indicates a greater devotion
of womens than mens income to everyday
subsistence and nutrition.36
Mencher describes income levels and relations
in landless families in Tamil Nadu and Kerala
and focuses attention on womens limited access
to sex-segregated rural labor markets.37 She

DIVIDED

985

documents that in a variety of poor classes in 14

different villages, women consistently devote a
higher proportion of their income (nearly 100
percent) to family needs than do men. Men
withhold some portion of their wages for personal use even when overall income is clearly
inadequate. Menchers data challenge the hypothesis that mens and womens income contributions are fungible and cooperatively worked
out. And while it is sometimes alleged that
men contribute more of their earnings when
women are earning less, Menchers data show
that fluctuations in mens contributions to the
household move in unexpected directions. Men
tend to make higher contributions to the household budget in both relative and absolute terms
when women are earning the most. Curiously,
they do not usually increase their contributions in
times of family stress (when women are finding
less work or have just given birth to a child).
Mens income contribution
to the household
varies, in most cases, not with family need but
with their own income. From this, most men
subtract a constant amount of income for personal use. The consequences of this pattern are
potentially serious in communities where infant mortality is high, where all families live on
the edge of poverty, and where malnutrition is
common. Development policy is not neutral in its
impact. Mencher notes that planned new production techniques will bypass the poorest women
and men and concentrate new technologies in the
hands of a minority of wealthier men. Under
present circumstances,
any reduction in the
income that women earn and devote to the family
is liable to affect their survival.
Gender-based responsibilities are most explicit
in Africa. In some societies, husbands are responsible for the provision of lodgings, childrens
tuition and other educational costs. Providing
income for food and clothing for children may
vary as a male or female/male joint obligation.
However, almost universally, women in Africa
are viewed as ultimately responsible for fulfilling
childrens food needs.38 Analyzing domestic
budgets among the Beti in Cameroon, Guyer
finds both class-related aspects to household
spending and distinctive male and female economies within households. Women are responsible for providing the day-to-day food and, to a
greater and greater degree, the education of
children.39
At issue is not simply the ways in which
womens income is used, but the degree to which
men and women differ in withdrawing personal
spending money from their earnings. Although
the specifics of womens consumption responsibillities vary (both in Africa and across the

986

WORLD

DEVELOPMENT

world), it is quite commonly found that gender

ideologies
support the notion that men have a
right to personal spending money, which they are
perceived to need or deserve, and that womens
income is for collective
purposes.40
Mencher,
Hoodfar,
Maher, Roldan, Engle, and Guyer commenting
on India, Egypt, Morocco, Mexico,
Guatemala,
and Cameroon,
respectively - confirm mens tendency to withhold portions of their
income for not directly productive
purposes,
even when families
live in or near poverty.
Maher suggests that one reason for this is the
socialization
of male children.
She traces its
development
in rural Morocco from a relatively
early age: In the hamlets, by the age of 15, they
[boys] are men and begin to avoid all work
connected
with the domestic enterprise
. .
Most adolescents
of this age are unemployed,
partly because they do not have the strength or
skills needed for most jobs. However,
this does
not deter them from seeking the kind of consumption which they consider proper to men clothes,
cigarettes,
cinema,
prostitutes.
Consumption
is more important
than work to the
social role of the adult male.4
This growing knowledge
of the specific destinations
of womens income was initially obscured by a larger debate about the possible
losses to childrens welfare when mothers work
outside the home.42 The debate initially arose in
industrialized
countries,
but has been translated
into Engles
succinctly
posed question:
Can
childrens needs be met when their mothers work
for cash income in third world countries?43 It
should first be observed that many women have
no choice about earning income. And research
has begun to spell out the favorable
developmental impacts of mothers
income-generating
activities.
Wilson noted that the children
of
working
mothers have more adequate
home
diets at 18 and 30 months
than same-aged
children
of nonworking
mothers
in a set of
Guatemalan
villages studied.44 More recent research by Engle, also in Guatemala,
confirmed
the positive contribution
of maternal earnings (of
nondomestic
workers) to the welfare of one- and
two-year
olds, and noted that two-year
old
children of working mothers were significantly
heavier than nonworkers
children.45 Kennedy,
in a study of the effects of cash cropping
on
nutrition in Kenya, concluded,
Children
from
households
headed by females consistently
have
better nutritional
status than preschoolers
from
other types of households.
Girls do better than
boys and older children do better than younger in
many of the growth parameters.
There is also
some evidence that income controlled by women
correlates
with improved
nutritional
status, in-

dicating that women are more likely to spend on

food and health care.46
Senauer evaluates the impact of the value of
womens time on the next generations
food and
nutritional
status in case studies,
two in the
Philippines and one in Sri Lanka. These analyses
coincide in the conclusion
that the value of
womens time can be utilized as a means to
indirectly
change behavior
and resource
flows
within households,
and thus improve the wellbeing in particular
of women and children.47
This conclusion
is warranted
by findings that
indicate that the mother and children receive a
higher relative share of a households
available
food when the mothers
estimated
wages increase. This is in contrast to a more limited or
even null effect of the fathers wage. In one
Philippine
case study, the fathers wage had a
negative
impact on childrens
long-run
nutritional status.
Blumberg has reviewed the other side of this
question, that is, the negative impacts on welfare
when womens control of cash income is reduced.48 Of the case studies she reviewed for the
World Bank, one drawn from Burkina
Faso
describes
the impact on household
nutrition
of a resettlement
scheme.49 This project denied
women personal
plots and emphasized
cotton
production
which relied
on increasing
their
family labor contribution.
As a result womens
work day lengthened,
their independent
commercial activities declined by more than half, and
they found it difficult to provide
the sauce
items for the major daily meal, a vital nutritional component.
Another example from Africa
- perhaps the classic - is that of the Mwea
resettlement
scheme in Kenya which, similar
to the Burkina Faso case, markedly
reduced
womens access to independent
plots while compelling them to work on the new irrigated rice
fields assigned to the men.50 Husbands
were
directly compensated
for the official project crop
- rice - while womens income and provisioning activities declined.
As a result, nutritional
levels fell and more than a few families broke up,
as women left the scheme to find better circumstances.

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

and welfare of low-income groups, it becomes

crucial for policy makers to see the link between
womens roles as financial managers of the
household and the physical and social status of
their children and eventually their readiness to
join a modern labor force. Household authority
patterns and norms may act to reduce the
potential benefits to women of new economic
opportunities
by, for example, insisting that
women take differential responsibility for children (and sometimes older dependents). There
tends not to be a reciprocal pressure on men to
contribute more to the family as their income
increases; on the contrary, men may keep their
bargaining edge by deciding what externally
derived benefits are to be passed on to the
household and to what degree. Men serve as
unacknowledged gatekeepers between the family
and purportedly
gender-blind
new economic
opportunities.
The forging of an appropriate theoretical link
between macrolevel policy and microlevel impacts (at the household and subhousehold level)
could enlighten debates about development policy, such as the current controversy about the
impact of economic readjustment (e.g., changes
in debt structure and internal pricing policies) on
the poor. The debate - in its most simplified
form - engages the economists (generally working within a neoclassical framework with its
presumptive unified household) and other social
scientists who tend to be more sensitive to the
interclass and other distributional
effects of
economic policy. A third set of actors, also part
of this debate, are the welfare planners who act
principally through health and nutrition interventions.
These three groups diagnose and treat differently, but their models of the household are
similar in assuming high levels of cooperation
between the adult males and adult females.
Economists propose to help the households in
their models principally by looking for ways to
increase the earnings of the main breadwinner. It
is assumed that income the male breadwinner
earns from newly created employment opportunities will be distributed to his family. The degree
to which this income will leak out for other
purposes is not formally considered, nor is the
degree of actual attachment of the economically
benefited males to the needy females and children. The second group, the social theorists,
more attuned to the distributional
effects of
macroeconomic policies, are alert to decreases in
real wealth; they look for polarization within societies and the creation of new class disparities.
Their sensitivity to increasing class differentiation and divisions within communities has often

981

not been extended to a concern with what

happens inside households in times of stress. The
third group, the health and welfare theorists and
activists, have fewer resources and a good deal
less in the way of policy instruments at their
command; in effect, they take on the women as
their agents. The invisible women of the economic theorists become powerful mothers in
the eyes of health advocates. It is believed that
these women, with more knowledge (but little
more time or money), can heal, reconstitute, and
fortify their children, while in fact the underlying
cause of much of the illness - inadequate
nutrition owing to low incomes - cannot be
dealt with at the level of health interventions.

(b) Is support of idi~di~;zl womens earning

7

Few who have studied womens position would

conclude that fundamental change for women
and, by extension, better prospects for their
children can be based solely on increasing their
individual earning power. Feminist theorists have
identified collective action as a primary step for
women in achieving personal power and status
in the public domain. Sandays cross-cultural
analysis of female status identified four indicators
of high status, the most important of which superseding female material control - is the
existence of female solidarity groups.52 An
empirical support for this analysis is the role that
some womens organizations
in South Asia,
specifically in India and Bangladesh, .have played
in bringing women, weak and in domestic isolation, into visibility and power in a wider
arena. s3 Their achievements extend beyond enhancing the material prospects of the participants, to effecting changes in womens outlooks,
increasing their freedom within the family unit,
and enabling them to mobilize vital community
resources, gaining access to literacy classes, a
voice in community government, and so forth.
Acharya and Bennetts 1983 study of household
decision making in Nepal provides an analytic
link for the phenomena observed. In their study,
womens activities were grouped on a continuum
from those in the domestic sphere to those outside the village. (It approximates a spatial concept, as womens productive activities move
farther from the geographic locus of the household.) They found that it is not womens productive activities per se that increase their influence
in household decision making, but rather the
extent to which women can move out of confined
production roles and into participation in the

988

WORLD DEVELOPMENT

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.

(c) Impermanent households

We have argued that all different household
forms contain more than one economy. We
have suggested that even in circumstances where
men are making conventionally prescribed and
consistent economic contributions, womens income and their ability to channel resources to
improve a households human welfare deserve
special support. We have defined the conditions
necessary to achieve the greatest impact economically and for women as a group - e.g.,
support of womens collective action. Finally,
this last section proposes that demographic factors also argue for making womens earning
power a better defined target of economic policy
and practice. That is, households are not permanent. Indeed, four trends are likely to increase
the numbers of women who are primary or sole
maintainers of households, especially those that
contain dependent children. These trends are
continuing differentials in spousal age at marriage, marital disruption,
national and international migration, and unpartnered adolescent
fertility.
Some societies continue to maintain median
differentials of age of marriage in the range of
7-9 years (e.g., Bangladesh,
Senegal). Such
differentials translate into a high proportion of
women who face widowhood as a certainty when
in most cases they will serve as their own primary
support
and plausibly
that of later-born

children. Apart from the natural process of death

as an uncoupler, formal marital disruption is on
the increase in many societies. Younger cohorts
tend to show higher rates than older cohorts.
Eleven percent of women in Bangladesh who
marry between the ages of 15 and 19 (the majority
marry around the age of 16) will be divorced
within five years. The comparable figures of
marital disruption of those contracting marriage
and common-law partnership between the ages
15 to 19 are 74 percent in Haiti, 17 percent in
Senegal, and 10 percent in Kenya. This translates
into numerous young women, typically with very
young children (particularly where adolescent
fertility impels many unions), being de jure or de
facto heads of households in their early twenties.
By age 40 to 45, 20 percent of African women,
rising as high as 30 percent in Mauritania, will be
separated, divorced, or widowed. In Asia the
range is 10 to 29 percent (the high being in
Bangladesh).
The net impact of male migration in the future,
both within and between countries, is difficult to
predict as it is increasing in some countries and
declining in others. But, on the whole, womens
participation
in migration is increasing.
As
Standings article (this volume) points out, the
need for a mobile, skilled, flexible labor force
will likely entail, for both men and women, a
pattern of work which implies short or longer
term separations from family. Finally, an already
high, and in some settings, a rapidly increasing proportion of women begin their families
as pregnant
adolescents
without committed
partners.
Womens risks of being sole or primary breadwinners are masked by survey classifications of
family types that greatly underenumerate
de
facto female household heads. Yet, even according to existing classification techniques and
cross-sectional information, as many as one-third
of households in the world may be female
headed and, in some communities, the validated
figure is as high as 50 percent. An important
missing piece of knowledge is how many women
pass through a phase in their lives when they are
the primary or sole economic support of young
children. But provisional indications based on
research on childrens experience in the Western
Hemisphere are alarming. For example, in the
United States about 21 percent of households at
any one point in time are female headed (and
over 60 percent of those in poverty are female
headed), but nearly half of all United States
children (and about 70 percent of black children)
will be in a household which is disrupted at some
point before the age of 16. The great majority of
these children
will live in female-headed

HOMES DIVIDED

households for an extended period. For example,

54 percent of the white children born between
1965 and 1969 whose families were disrupted
were living with their unremarried mother five
years after the family break-up. The comparable
figure for black children was 87 percent.*
Similar research in developing countries has
been undertaken
using life table analysis of
census data. As noted elsewhere, census definitions of female headship may significantly
underenumerate
the households primarily or
exclusively reliant on womens earnings, sometimes by a factor of two. Still, by manipulating
marital disruption data as it stands, it has been
estimated that in Colombia as many as one-third
of the children and in Mexico as many as onefifth will live some portion of their lives with an
unmarried mother by the age of 15. In the case
of Mexico, a child born out of a union may spend
three to five years in this state and in Colombia
five years. For children born between unions the
average time is different - seven years with an
unmarried mother in Mexico and 3.5 years in
Colombia. Given societies where as many as
40 percent of the households are currently maintained by women, is it plausible that as many as
80 percent of the children live in a female-headed
and -maintained household at some point and at
similarly young ages? What are the consequences
to the women who support these households and
to the children with whom they share their
poverty?
In sum, it seems that the process of individualization of life strategies is becoming more explicit. Economic pressures and social change are
spinning the family as traditionally defined down
to its core - mothers and children. Though
many different family members may aggregate to
the core at different times as contributors of
income or as dependents, the most persistent
economic relationship within these complex networks of intimates is the attachment of mothers
to children. Grandparents leave, husbands break
off, aunts, sisters, and brothers come and go, but
the mothers of young children tend to stay with
their young children and the economic vulnerability of this reduced core should be a matter of
international policy interest.

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.

Nash (1953); Manser and Brown (1979).

3.

Ben-Porath

(1980).

4.

Sen (1985), paragraphs

5.

Folbre (1988). p. 252.

21-27.

6. Jones (1983); Hanger and Morris (1973); Dey

(1983); Rogers (1983); and Blumberg (1986).

990

WORLD

7.

Recchini

8.

Joekes

de Lattes

and

Wainerman

DEVELOPMENT

(1981).

(1987a).

is as follows: The first

9. Krishnas methodology
step is to obtain a detailed distribution
of female time
between various activities through large-scale
sample
surveys. The next (second) step is to classify activities
for the purpose
of valuation
into three categories:
(a) activities which are clearly productive
in the conventional
sense and paid for in money or in kind;
(b) activities which are clearly in the nature of final
consumption,
e.g., eating, sleeping, dressing, socializing, and engaging
in other recreational
or religious
activities; and (c) unpaid quasi-productive
activities.
There is obviously
no ambiguity
about the status of
activities in categories (a) and (b). Activities of type (a)
are clearly
productive,
and already
regarded
and
valued as such in current statistics.
Time devoted to
them is clearly employment.
And the net value added
by them is a part of national
income.
(Krishna
discusses
the ambiguities
and methods
to resolve
them.) The third task is the valuation of what we have
called quasi-productive
activities.
There is a good
precedent
for valuing them, in the procedures
used to
value unpaid family inputs in the calculation
of the cost
of production
of agricultural
products
.
In every
transitional,
semi-feudal,
semi-commercial
economy,
almost every kind of unpaid quasi-productive
labor is
purchased and paid for in some nearby commercialized
subsector.
Krishna (n.d.), Appendix
B-2.
10.

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.

BuviniC, Youssef, and Von Elm (1978).

59.

Richter (1988).

58.

Furstenberg

60.

Papanek and Schwede (1988).

et al. (1983).

991