Intra-household Relationships Research Articles

Deconstructing Cardboard Muslim Man: Masculinity Continuum and Women’s Economic Empowerment in Bangladesh

This paper analyses the construction of Muslim masculinities and their positioning towards women’s economic empowerment through a life history method applied to examine the lives of 12 purposely selected Bangladeshi Muslim men. The analysis of the men’s accounts positioned the narrators on a masculinity continuum, which incorporates three fluid masculinity markers – Antagonists, Allies and Advocates. The paper challenges the notion of one specific hegemonic masculinity, although some common features were identified, such as dominance of the male breadwinner and situatedness within heteronormativity. The narrators demonstrated a strong inter-generational shift towards rejection of violence and preference for peaceful intrahousehold relationships, even among Antagonists. The proximity of Ally masculinities to Advocates and their relational interests create strong potential for strategic engagement and guiding Ally men to adopt more progressive masculinities.

Gender Segregation in Education: Evidence From Higher Secondary Stream Choice in India.

This paper investigates gender-based segregation across different fields of study at the senior secondary level of schooling in a large developing country. We use a nationally representative longitudinal data set from India to analyze the extent and determinants of gender gap in higher secondary stream choice. Using fixed-effects regressions that control for unobserved heterogeneity at the regional and household levels, we find that girls are about 20 percentage points less likely than boys to study in science (STEM) and commerce streams as compared with humanities. This gender disparity is unlikely to be driven by gender-specific differences in cognitive ability, given that the gap remains large and significant even after we control for individuals' past test scores. We establish the robustness of these estimates through various sensitivity analyses: including sibling fixed effects, considering intrahousehold relationships among individuals, and addressing sample selection issues. Disaggregating the effect on separate streams, we find that girls are most underrepresented in the study of science. Our findings indicate that gender inequality in economic outcomes, such as occupational segregation and gender pay gaps, is determined by gendered trajectories set much earlier in the life course, especially at the school level.

Book Reviews

Shareen Joshi of Georgetown University reviews “Advanced Introduction to Feminist Economics” by Joyce P. Jacobsen. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Discusses the intersections between economics, feminism, and teaching, focusing on topics such as feminist approaches to economic development, modeling of intra-household relationships, and differential effects of international trade and finance by gender.”

Food insecurity and low access to high-quality food for preconception women in Nepal: the importance of household relationships.

Women in South Asia, including Nepal, have some of the poorest nutritional indicators globally, leading to poor maternal and child health outcomes. Nepal also suffers from high levels of household food insecurity, and newly married women are at high risk. Intra-household relationships may mediate the relationship between food insecurity and women's nutrition in Nepal for newly married women. Our aim is to understand how newly married, preconception, women's food consumption changes when she enters her husband's home, compared with her natal home. We also explore whether relationship quality with husbands and mothers-in-law mediates the association between food insecurity and eating less high-quality food, using structural equation modelling. Cross-sectional survey data. Rural Nepal in 2018. Data were collected from 200 newly married, preconception women. Women had poor diet quality, and most ate fewer high-quality foods important for pregnancy in their marital, compared with natal, home. Higher quality relationships with mothers-in-laws mediated the association between food insecurity and a woman eating fewer high-quality foods in her marital, compared with natal, home. Relationship quality with husbands was not associated with changes in food consumption. Preconception, newly married women in Nepal are eating less high-quality foods important for women's health during the preconception period - a key period for avoiding adverse maternal and infant health outcomes. Relationships with mothers-in-law are key to women's access to high-quality food, suggesting that interventions aiming to improve maternal and child nutrition should target all household members.

‘That Child Support Grant Gives Me Powers’ – Exploring Social and Relational Aspects of Cash Transfers in South Africa in Times of Livelihood Change

This article builds on existing literature on the material effects of cash transfers. It explores people’s own perceptions of the role of unconditional cash transfers in building, maintaining, and transforming social relations in a small village in rural South Africa. Much of the literature studying the impacts of cash transfers in the global South relies on quantitative measures. Thus, there is a paucity of micro-level qualitative research on beneficiaries’ own perspectives on the social impacts of cash transfers. To this end, we explored whether the Child Support Grant, a small cash transfer given to impoverished caregivers of children, changed individual and intra-household relationships, as well as community solidarity in this village. We argue that South Africa’s cash transfers have largely had positive social transformative effects on individuals, in relation to a sense of dignity, autonomy and increased decision-making powers for primary caregivers, usually mothers or grandmothers. Positive effects were also perceived in relation to these households and communities, although some contested effects and limitations were also found. These findings are of interest in the ongoing broader debates around the effects of cash transfers globally as well as regionally in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Cognitive interviewing to improve women's empowerment questions in surveys: Application to the health and nutrition and intrahousehold relationships modules for the project-level Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index.

In 2015, the United Nations adopted the Sustainable Development Goals, which include fostering gender equality and women's empowerment and ending hunger and malnutrition. To monitor progress and evaluate programmes that aim to achieve these goals, survey instruments are needed that can accurately assess related indicators. The project‐level Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro‐WEAI) is being developed to address the need for an instrument that is sensitive to changes in empowerment over the duration of an intervention. The pro‐WEAI includes new modules with previously untested survey questions, including a health and nutrition module (focused on women's agency in this area) and an intrahousehold relationships module. This study uses cognitive interviewing to identify how new survey questions might be misinterpreted and to understand what experiences women are referencing when they respond to these questions. This was undertaken with the goal of informing revision to the modules. The study was conducted in Bangladesh with women from nuclear, extended, and migrant‐sending households and from two regions of the country to identify difficulties with interpretation and response formulation across these groups. Findings revealed that questions were generally understood, but participants occasionally responded to the wrong part of the question, did not understand key phrases, or were uncomfortable with questions. The findings also suggested ways to revise the modules and strengthen the pro‐WEAI. The revised pro‐WEAI health and nutrition and intrahousehold relationships modules will advance the ability to measure changes in these domains and their relationship with the health and nutritional status of women and their children.

Power as agency: A critical reflection on the measurement of women’s empowerment in the development sector

Despite extensive literature on the complex nature of empowerment, current efforts to measure women’s empowerment in the agricultural development sector are largely limited to assessing visible forms of agency. We take a critical look at current efforts to measure women’s empowerment at the individual/household level through standardized tools. We examine the results of a household survey conducted in Nepal using the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), which was developed as a monitoring and evaluation tool for the Feed the Future Initiative. Our interpretation of the results is informed by qualitative fieldwork conducted in the same region. In our quantitative analysis, we regress correlates of empowerment identified in the literature, such as age, education, household wealth, income, and household composition, on individual empowerment as measured by the WEAI. While several factors associated with women’s empowerment are significantly associated, household composition and intra-household relationships, which we expected to be essential factors in the local context, appear to be unrelated to the WEAI empowerment score. A measure of critical consciousness tested alongside the WEAI instrument appears instead to be closely associated with these factors. Our qualitative findings reveal that there is a discrepancy between local meanings of empowerment and definitions of empowerment defined in terms of agency. Based on these results, we suggest that improvements in measurement may be possible if approaches that measure power predominantly in terms of agency or decision-making were to include critical consciousness in their framework.

Cash for Women’s Empowerment? A Mixed-Methods Evaluation of the Government of Zambia’s Child Grant Program

Summary. —The empowerment of women, broadly defined, is an often-cited objective and benefit of social cash transfer programs in developing countries. Despite the promise and potential of cash transfers to empower women, the evidence supporting this outcome is mixed. In addition, there is little evidence from programs at scale in sub-Saharan Africa. We conducted a mixed-methods evaluation of the Government of Zambia’s Child Grant Program, a poverty-targeted, unconditional transfer given to mothers or primary caregivers of young children aged zero to five. The quantitative component was a four-year longitudinal clustered-randomized control trial in three rural districts, and the qualitative component was a one-time data collection involving in-depth interviews with women and their partners stratified on marital status and program participation. Our study found that women in beneficiary households were making more sole or joint decisions (across five out of nine domains); however, impacts translated into relatively modest increases in the number of decision domains a woman is involved in, on average by 0.34 (or a 6% increase over a baseline mean of 5.3). Qualitatively, we found that changes in intrahousehold relationships were limited by entrenched gender norms, which indicate men as heads of household and primary decision makers. However, women’s narratives showed the transfer increased financial empowerment as they were able to retain control over transfers for household investment and savings for emergencies. We highlight methodological challenges in using intrahousehold decision making as the primary indicator to measure empowerment. Results show potential for unconditional cash transfer programs to improve the financial and intrahousehold status of female beneficiaries, however it is likely additional design components are need for transformational change.

Tree products, food security and livelihoods: a household study of Burkina Faso

SUMMARYThis paper examines the contribution of products derived from baobab (Adansonia digitata), shea (Vitellaria paradoxa) and néré (Parkia biglobosa) to rural livelihoods in Burkina Faso. A survey was conducted in northern and southern regions to identify and understand the social and environmental factors influencing the utilization of tree products by rural households for home consumption and commercialization, and to explore the contribution of tree products to food security. Emphasis was placed on the roles and responsibilities of women for tree product utilization. Inter- and intra-household relationships governing tree foods were found to vary between regions and tree species, and with gender and household composition. Collection and utilization of tree products differed between north and south because of contrasting ecological contexts and evolving social mores. Household decision making processes were negotiated and consensual in both regions. The results suggest that domestication and dissemination of planting and regeneration technologies, and product processing and marketing initiatives, need a gendered and tree-specific approach in order to build on local norms and capacities. Measures for the conservation and management of tree resources are most important where ecological constraints are most severe but dependence is greatest for sustaining food security.

Joint Modeling of Household Vehicle and Activity Allocation

Traffic is a major problem, even in countries with low per capita vehicle ownership. Governments often use vehicle restriction measures to combat severe traffic, especially in developing countries. However, such restrictions can disrupt economic efficiency as well as the daily lives of citizens. The discipline of transportation modeling has emerged as a response to these problems. In particular, activity-based travel demand models show great promise. These models require an accurate consideration of the social factors involved in travel behavior; however, recent studies have only considered intrahousehold relationships separately from vehicle usage. This paper describes the development of a joint model for household activity and vehicle allocation. A paired combinatorial logit model was used to estimate the share of each household member in nonmandatory activities. A vehicle allocation model is a multinomial logit model that assigns an allocation probability to each household member. The two models were estimated by a joint modeling framework. The model was estimated with data collected from three cities in Iran. A strong relationship was found between the activity allocation pattern and gender, the role of the individual in the family, employment status, time of day, and duration of the activity. These effects were especially pronounced in households with young children. Incorporating demographics into transportation models can more robustly model vehicle usage behavior. This study focused on Iranian cities, but the results can be extended to other countries with similar characteristics.

Rural women migrants in the Pearl River Delta: analysis of migration motivations at the household scale

Most previous studies conclude that rural women's migration is motivated to maximize their household economic income and their migration is largely decided by their parents or husbands. But the picture of rural women's migration in China is more complicated. This paper aims to explore why rural women in China migrate to cities to seek off-farm employment at the household scale. We emphasize intra-household relationships in analysis and employ rural women's narratives about migration and their families to reveal their migration motivation. Models of filial daughters, liberal daughters and ambivalent mothers are presented to interpret the diversity and complexity of rural women's departure from the countryside: (1) filial daughters whose migration is a part of household economic strategies, (2) liberal daughters whose migration is for individual welfare and (3) ambivalent factory mothers whose migration is the result of negotiations among accompanying husbands, childcare and paid work. Moreover, we have placed rural women migration in the particular background of regional development in China and find that there are many more liberal daughters than filial daughters, which are caused by rural development, their parents' increasing earning power and lower fertility in the countryside. We argue that both maiden workers and factory mothers play an active role in their migratory decision-making.

POLYGYNY AND WOMEN'S HEALTH IN RURAL MALI

Women's social networks and social power are increasingly seen as important factors modulating their health in sub-Saharan Africa. Polygyny, a common marital structure in many societies, mediates important intra-household relationships by requiring both competition and co-operation among co-wives. Using mixed methods, semi-structured questionnaires were administered to 298 women aged 15-84 living in the Kolondiéba region of rural Mali in 1999, and supplemented by detailed interviews with 40 women. Three categories of outcome were explored: illness experience, therapeutic itinerary and social support received. Quantitative data were analysed using regression analysis and qualitative data using a grounded theory approach. In quantitative analyses, controlling for age and household wealth index, senior wives were less likely to be escorted to a healer by their husbands during illness than were junior wives or monogamous women. Polygynous women were also less likely to obtain a treatment for which there was a monetary fee. Fewer than one-third of polygynous women reported the assistance of a co-wife during illness in any given task. In qualitative analyses, women further related varied mechanisms through which polygyny impacted their health trajectories. These ranged from strongly supportive relationships, to jealousy because of unequal health or fertility, bias in emotional and material support provided by husbands, and accusations of wrong-doing and witchcraft. This study highlights the need for more prospective mixed methods analyses to further clarify the impact of polygyny on women's health-related experiences and behaviours in sub-Saharan Africa.

Capturing Latent Household Preferences in Daily-Activity Pattern Choices

One fundamental feature of most operational activity-based models (ABMs) developed in the United States is the concept of a day activity pattern, which, in its broadest sense, is a way of characterizing all the activities undertaken in a day at the individual level. This pattern often includes a sequence of models that generate activities of different types for each individual. In many cases, these models treat all individuals in a household independently, while in other cases, specialized techniques capture intrahousehold relationships. This paper presents a new technique for capturing some of these intrahousehold relationships in a daily-activity pattern (DAP) model via terms for latent household preferences while also allowing for other specific relationships to emerge in more standard ways. The model is estimated on data from the Houston–Galveston region and serves as an extension to the DAP model framework being used in the ABM system under development for that region. The results suggest that strong household level preferences exist. For many activity pattern types, these household preferences are more important than the preferences of the individual. In addition, the modeling framework is concise, can easily accommodate households of any size, and can predict the exact number and type of mandatory tours (i.e., work, school, and university activities) for individuals in a single model.

The fertility transition in South Africa: A retrospective panel data analysis

Since 1960 South Africa has seen a steep fall in fertility levels and currently its total fertility rate is the lowest on the African continent. Given the high prevailing levels of fertility in African countries, a better understanding of the factors behind the fertility transition will be valuable not only for South Africa, but also more widely for other African countries. This paper uses the National Income Dynamics Study data to construct a retrospective panel to investigate reasons for the decline in fertility. The analysis attributes a large share of the observed fertility decline across birth cohorts to improvements in education levels and the lower prevalence of marriage. However, a considerable segment of the transition is ascribed to unobservables. These may include HIV/AIDS, the increased use of contraceptives and changes in both intra-household relationships and the social role of women.

Income, Gender, and Consumption: A Study of Malawian Households

This paper uses 1998 household level data from urban Malawi to look at the impact on consumption patterns of the share of total household income accruing to different individuals within the household. Specifically, male and female income shares and other factors which may influence intra-household bargaining such as education are analyzed. The study finds that for some categories of good such as personal and household hygiene and clothing, unitary household models are unsuitable as intra-household relationships and differing preferences of individuals play a key role in consumption choices. Overall the results indicate that females favor household hygiene, vehicle repair and girls. clothing while males favor male clothing. Consumption choices are influenced by both the income and education of the main male and female members, and crucially, the impact of income shares on household consumption is non-linear.

Etienne van de Walle, ed. African Households: Censuses and Surveys. Amonk, N.Y., and London: M.E. Sharpe, 2006. xxxix + 247 pp. Figures. Maps. Tables. References. Index. $104.95. Cloth.

Etienne van de Walle, ed. African Households: Censuses and Surveys. Amonk, N.Y, and London: M.E. Sharpe, 2006. xxxix + 247 pp. Figures. Maps. Tables. References. Index. $104.95. Cloth. Peter Laslett first showed us the sociological information available in historical census data. African census and survey data are rarely employed to such ends, so the African Census Analysis Project, a collaboration between the University of Pennsylvania and African institutions, arranged an Internet conference on African households in November 2001. These are the published results. Here the is merely a unit of enumeration. It generally contains members of at least one family, plus, often, unrelated others. Censuses take one of two definitions of the household. Francophone researchers tend to adopt a de jure, or social, definition of the household, thus including those who are absent on the enumeration day, while Anglophone researchers prefer a de facto, or residential, definition, and count only those physically present. The former runs the risk of double counts, while die latter tends to manufacture extra households and female heads. All of this is explained in van de Walle's masterful introduction. He notes that African censuses are weak when it comes to coding for intrahousehold relationships. In consequence, grandchildren, children's spouses, and domestic employees are often lumped together under the impenetrable category of other relative. The most useful censuses are those that link husbands and wives, and mothers to their children. Three of the chapters here examine the merits of various censuses and surveys. Van de Walle and Gaye's comparison of the Senegalese and Gambian censuses finds that Senegal's de jure census, just by including questions on marriage type and the rank of polygynous wives, is far more informative than the Gambia's more elaborate de facto census. Next, Labov shows the limitations of Tanzania's minimalist de facto census, which, however, does reveal that Tanzania's solitary females are usually separated, divorced, or widowed, and that the urban ones are more likely to be household heads than their rural counterparts. Then Hosegood and Timaeus's work on KwaZulu, Natal, shows how their time-consuming de jure survey accurately captures the emic realities of household composition, the high levels of individual and household mobility, the number of nonresidential members, and memberships in multiple households. Vimard and Fassassi's chapter on the 1975-98 structural changes in Cote d'lvoire's households is the only one with a central focus upon economics. They show that the recent increase in family breakups has less to do with a drift toward nuclear families than with households' relative prosperity. Single-parent households and coresident relatives are now permanent social fixtures. Four of the chapters focus upon children. Townsend, Madhavan, Collinson, and Garenne's work in South Africa's Northern Province successfully traces personal relationships within and across household boundaries by training enumerators to use the six basic anthropological kinship terms. …

Choice of Agricultural Tenancy in the Presence of Transaction Costs

In recent years, transaction costs have been given a central place in explaining the behavior and structure of firms, the level and degree of hierarchy, intrahousehold relationships, broad sweeps of economic history,' and the nature and incidence of different contracts, including agricultural contracts.2 In the latter context, however, with the exception of Roumasset and Uy (1980, 1984), no formal model of transaction costs has been developed. The purpose of the present paper is to utilize the insights of the authors cited in the preceding footnotes to develop and test with Indian data a model of transaction costs capable of explaining the choice among three major forms of agricultural land contracts-namely, wage, share, and rent contracts. Standard economic theory implicitly assumes that the factors of production are subject to complete control and predictable performance. This assumption holds, however, only when all factors are owned by the same party. In other cases, for example, in agricalture, when land and labor are owned by different parties, control by any one agent is necessarily incomplete, requiring one agent to monitor the performance of the other(s). While monitoring is required under all forms of contract and with respect to all inputs, it tends to be more serious for labor and land. As a result, landowners undertake monitoring expenses and tenants spend time in both searching for future jobs and assuring landowners of adequate compensation should some harm be done to their interests.3 In this paper we follow Jensen and Meckling (1976) in broadening the definition of the relevant total transaction costs (TC) of any contract to include both the loss to the landowner arising from labor-shirking, output underreporting, and land mismanagement on the part of the worker-tenant (net of the latter's gain from these activities) and the expenditures by both the landowner in monitoring the worker-tenant and the worker-tenant in job-search. While institutional rigidities may sometimes arise, apparently allowing inefficient contractual choices to prevail, in general and in the long run, competition with alternative forms of contract should result in a form of contract which minimizes the total (or excess burden of) transaction costs.