Editorial.

Abstract

A gender perspective requires examining how gender roles affect the ways in which various family members can participate in the wider community, economy, and state. It is important to recognize the disparity between perceptions about the family as a benign institution and the reality that many families consist of a paradoxical blend of love, support, friction, domination, and even cruelty. Definitions of family reveal the social implications of the belief that families are centered on children and the need of patriarchs to control female sexuality. Notions about households are generally more concrete, and many households include people who are not family members and are not nuclear in nature. Many development initiatives have floundered because of the assumption that households distribute resources according to individual needs. Instead, household members use bargaining power to get their way, and women are generally in weaker bargaining positions than men. Linking men solely with production and women solely with reproduction ignores the realities of most women's lives, although the unpaid reproductive work women do influences their access to paid employment. In order to assure family stability and to find ways to provide social welfare, women's workload in the family must be reduced. Family life must not be hidden in a "private" sphere where injustices and violence are ignored. Unconscious biases against families of various types must be rooted out and overcome, and policy-makers must recognize that families evolve to meet changing needs. Finally, the notion of the nuclear family as the ideal family type must be challenged.