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 FCND DISCUSSION PAPER NO. 27

"BARGAINING" AND GENDER RELATIONS:

WITHIN AND BEYOND THE HOUSEHOLD

Bina Agarwal

Food Consumption and Nutrition Division

International Food Policy Research Institute

1200 Seventeenth Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036-3006 U.S.A.
(202) 862-5600
Fax: (202) 467-4439

March 1997

FCND Discussion Papers contain preliminary material and research results, and are circulated prior to a full
peer review in order to stimulate discussion and critical comment. It is expected that most Discussion Papers
will eventually be published in some other form, and that their content may also be revised.
 ABSTRACT

Highlighting the problems posed by a "unitary" conceptualization of the household,

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

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

2. Bargaining and Intrahousehold Gender Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Determinants of Intrahousehold Bargaining Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Bargaining for Subsistence Within the Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Social Perceptions and Bargaining Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Do All Factors Carry Equal Weight? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Bargaining over Family Land . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Social Norms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Norms as Limits to What Can Be Bargained About . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Norms as Determinants of or Constraints to Bargaining Power . . . . . . . . . 24
Norms and How Bargaining Is Conducted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Bargaining over Social Norms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
What Affects Bargaining over Norms? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Self-perceptions, Altruism, and Self-interest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Do Women Suffer from False Perceptions? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Altruism or Self-Interest? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Altruism and Intrahousehold Coalitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

3. Beyond the Household: The Market, the Community, and the State . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

The Market . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
The Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
The State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Interactions: The Household, the Market, the Community, and the State . . . . . . 53

4. In Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

FIGURE

1. Factors likely to affect rural women's bargaining power (in relation to subsistence)
in different arenas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
 iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This paper builds on and develops some of the issues I had raised in A Field of
One's Own: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia (Agarwal 1994a). Initial discussions
with and subsequent comments on the paper from Lawrence Haddad, Janet Seiz,
Elizabeth Katz, Agnes Quisumbing, and Nancy Folbre were most useful, and I thank
them all for their responses. I also thank Joti Kohli for her help in locating several useful
articles.

Prof. Bina Agarwal

Institute of Economic Growth
University of New Delhi
 1. INTRODUCTION

The nature of gender relations—relations of power between women and men—is

not easy to grasp in its full complexity. But these relations impinge on economic
outcomes in multiple ways.1 The complexity arises not least from the fact that gender
relations (like all social relations) embody both the material and the ideological. They are
revealed not only in the division of labor and resources between women and men, but
also in ideas and representations—the ascribing to women and men of different abilities,
attitudes, desires, personality traits, behavior patterns, and so on. Gender relations are
both constituted by and help constitute these practices and ideologies, in interaction with
other structures of social hierarchy such as class, caste, and race. Neither uniform across
societies nor historically static (as numerous studies of different cultures, regions, and
communities bear out), they may be seen as largely socially constructed (rather than
biologically determined).2 The process of this social construction, however, is
inadequately understood, as is also how particular forms of gender inequalities are
maintained, and by what means they might change over time.
Recent growing interest among economists in intrahousehold dynamics addresses
these questions. For instance, there has been an increasing criticism of "unitary"
household models that assume that household members seek to maximize utility on the

1
Studies on gender and microeconomic outcomes are too numerous to list here, but on gender and
macroeconomics, see, especially, World Development (1995).
2
Biology (pregnancy, childbearing, etc.) may have influenced the historical construction of some
aspects of gender relations, such as the gender division of labor. But biology cannot explain the entire gamut
of gender inequalities we observe today, nor even the perpetuation of an observed gender division of labor
(e.g., technical developments have minimized the importance of muscular strength; contraceptive technology
reduces the disability of frequent pregnancies; and a variety of possible arrangements make child care a less
binding constraint). In any case, the considerable variation of gender relations across cultures indicates the
enormous importance of nonbiological factors.
 2

basis of a set of common preferences represented by an aggregate utility function, and a

common budget constraint. A range of alternative household models use the game-
theoretic approach to incorporate a more complex understanding of how family
decisionmaking occurs, variously allowing for individual differences in preferences, in
budget constraints, and in control over resource use. Although most do not explicitly
address gender asymmetries, they can accommodate such asymmetries, and thus provide
a useful approach for analyzing gender relations and point economic thinking in a new
direction. At the same time, these formulations, consisting mostly of formal models, are
restricted in their ability to incorporate the full complexity of gender interactions within
households, and the simultaneity of various processes and forms of decisionmaking. In
addition, most say little about gender relations beyond the household.
This paper outlines some aspects critical for understanding intrahousehold
dynamics from a gender perspective that existing household models either miss
altogether, or do not adequately address. For instance, most models characterize these
dynamics as a form of "bargaining," but typically say little about the complex range of
factors, especially qualitative ones, that might determine bargaining power; what role
social norms and perceptions play in the bargaining process; what effect gender
differences (if such exist) in the exercise of self-interest might have on bargaining; and so
on. Such factors can impinge crucially on the accuracy of theoretical formulations,
empirical predictions, and policy interventions, and must therefore be given cognizance in
framing hypotheses, data gathering, and analyses.
Equally, models and policies could go awry if intrahousehold dynamics are
assumed (as they often are) to exist in isolation, without examining the extrahousehold
socioeconomic and legal institutions within which households are embedded, and how
these institutions might themselves be subject to change. The paper seeks to provide
pointers on this count as well, extending the bargaining approach beyond the household
to the interlinked arenas of the market, the community, and the State.
 3

For this purpose, I both use and emphasize the usefulness of what I term "analytical
description" for capturing the complexity and historic variability of gender relations in
intra- and extra-household dynamics. By analytical description I mean a formulation that
seeks to comprehensively spell out both qualitative and quantitative factors that might
impinge on outcomes, without being preconstrained by data limitations or by the structure
that formal modeling imposes. A formal model could be seen as a subset of analytical
description; and empirical analysis based on the model as a further subset. All
three—analytical description, a formal model, and empirical analysis—can in different
ways extend our understanding about how gender relations get constructed and contested
within and outside the household.

2. BARGAINING AND INTRAHOUSEHOLD GENDER RELATIONS

Are you suggesting that women should be given rights in land? What do
women want? To break up the family?
(Minister of Agriculture to the author at an
Indian Planning Commission seminar on Land Reform, June 1989.)

Whether or not so intended, the Minister's reaction implies at least two assumptions
about the family: that its stability as an institution hinges on the maintenance of unequal
resource positions between women and men; and that economic self-interest plays an
important role in intra-family gender relations, which would be revealed with particular
starkness in gender conflict over a critical form of property such as arable land. Such a
picture of the family is a far cry from that implicit in much of standard economic theory,
namely of the family as an undifferentiated unit governed primarily or solely by altruism.
 4

The latter picture is today difficult to defend in the face of growing evidence to the
contrary.3 Households/families (I will use the two terms interchangeably4) are
recognizably constituted of multiple actors, with varying (often conflicting) preferences
and interests, and differential abilities to pursue and realize those interests. They are
arenas of (albeit not the sole determinants of) consumption, production, and investment,
within which both labor and resource allocation decisions are made. And evidence from
many regions reveals persistent gender inequalities in the distribution of household
resources and tasks.
A number of economists are today grappling with such complexities, within and
outside the game-theoretic format. Most take as their starting point a critique of Becker's
(1965, 1981) unitary model of the family,5 agreeing that it is problematic. This model
treats the household as a single entity in relation to both consumption and production. It
assumes that all household resources and incomes are pooled, and that resources are
allocated by an altruistic household head who represents the household's tastes and
preferences and seeks to maximize household utility. There is less agreement, however,
on alternative approaches to intrahousehold interactions. These approaches cover a
diverse range: cooperative, noncooperative, collective, or some mix of these. In varying

3
For interesting discussions on problems associated with a unitary conceptualization of the household,
see, among others, the writings of economists Doss (1996), Folbre (1986, 1988), Haddad, Hoddinott, and
Alderman (1994), Hart (1993), IDS Bulletin (1991), Katz (1992), Agarwal (1994a), Kabeer (1994), Nelson
(1994), Ott (1995), Seiz (1991), and Sen (1983, 1990); and anthropologists Guyer (1981), Harriss (1981),
Moore (1991), as well as others in Guyer and Peters (1987). In addition, a critique of unitary household
models is implicit in the writings of a number of economists (mentioned below) who have formulated
alternative models.
4
Some scholars distinguish between "household" and "family" (e.g., Shah 1973), but I have used them
interchangeably, given the empirical variability of these units across regions, and their definitional variability
across the literature (Guyer and Peters 1987; Kolenda 1987). For instance, households can be commensal and
residential units, and/or units of joint property ownership, production, consumption, and investment, or they
can constitute some intersection of these dimensions. They also vary in membership composition from units
of single persons, to those of parents and children, to those with additional relatives: siblings, grandparents,
and so on.
5
Also referred to as the common preference model, the altruistic model, or the benevolent dictator
model.
 5

degree, they seek to incorporate the social reality of the family as described in
anthropological and sociological writings. Differences between the approaches, outlined
in several excellent review articles, do not need detailed repetition here.6 Suffice it to
mention their broad features. Barring the "collective models"7 that make no assumption
other than that the outcome will be Pareto efficient (and that attempt to uncover the
decisionmaking rules and processes through empirical analysis), all the others
characterize household decisionmaking as some form of "bargaining." A brief outline of
the bargaining framework is therefore warranted.
Within the bargaining approach, intrahousehold interaction is characterized as
containing elements of both cooperation and conflict. Household members cooperate
insofar as cooperative arrangements make each of them better-off than noncooperation.
However, many different cooperative outcomes are possible in relation to who does what,
who gets what goods and services, and how each member is treated. These outcomes are
beneficial to the negotiating parties relative to noncooperation. But among the set of
cooperative outcomes, some are more favorable to each party than others—that is, one
person's gain is another person's loss—hence the underlying conflict between those
cooperating. Which outcome will emerge depends on the relative bargaining power of
the household members.
A member's bargaining power would be defined by a range of factors, in particular,
the strength of the person's fall-back position (the outside options that determine how
well-off s/he would be if cooperation failed), also termed as the "threat point." An
improvement in the person's fall-back position (better outside options) would lead to an
improvement in the deal the person gets within the household.

6
See, especially, Doss (1996), Haddad, Hoddinott, and Alderman (1994), Haddad, Hoddinott,
and Alderman (1997), Hoddinott (1991), Katz (1996), and Strauss and Thomas (1995).
7
See Bourguignon and Chiappori (1992), Browning et al. (1994), and Chiappori (1988, 1992).
 6

The early formal critiques of the unitary model used a cooperative bargaining
approach, and relaxed only the assumption of common preferences while retaining that of
income pooling (Manser and Brown 1980; McElroy and Horney 1981), adapting to a two-
person household Nash's (1950, 1953) formulation of cooperative "bargaining problems"
within game theory. Household members bargain over the use of the pooled income, the
outcome depending on their bargaining power, determined by their respective fall-back
positions. These depend, in turn, on what McElroy (1990) terms extrahousehold
environmental parameters (EEPs) such as parental wealth, a person's nonwage income,
and the legal structure governing marriage and divorce. These cooperative models
assume the attainment of Pareto optimality in household decisions, enforceable and
binding contracts, and symmetrical positions between the parties in relation to
information availability and bargaining ability, and say little about the actual process of
bargaining.
In contrast, the "noncooperative" models relax many of these assumptions,
including those of Pareto efficiency, income pooling, and enforceable and binding
contracts. In addition to allowing differing preferences between individuals, they allow
for individual production decisions and asymmetry between the parties with respect to
information and the rules of the game (see Wooley 1988, and Kanbur and Haddad 1994,
among others).
In between are models that combine both approaches, recognizing the possibility of
"separate spheres" of activities while cooperating over, say, the production and/or
consumption of some joint goods or activities. For instance, Lundberg and Pollak (1993),
who pioneered the notion of separate spheres, point out that for many small decisions in a
marriage, divorce is not a credible threat should cooperation fail. Rather, people may
remain within the marriage but withdraw into separate spheres, defined by, say, a division
of labor based on socially recognized gender roles that emerge without explicit
bargaining. This withdrawal option would constitute an "internal" threat point. The
parties would, however, still bargain over jointly shared goods and activities, such as
 7

meals and child care, with the bargaining operating like a Nash cooperative game. In
other words a noncooperative solution is used as a threat point in a cooperative game
(also see Ulph 1988, Jones 1983, and McElroy 1997).
These "nested" separate spheres of noncooperation within the household may also
be defined by separate semi-autonomous loci of production and consumption (Carter and
Katz 1997; Katz 1992). In Katz's (1992) alternative "reciprocal claims model," each
household member has a distinct income stream and makes resource allocation decisions
subject to her/his own budget constraint; any transfers of income, labor, land, and other
resources between individuals are explicitly recognized; and household resource
allocation is treated as a set of individually determined allocation choices. Inter-member
resource transfers are bargained over between the parties concerned.
Attempts to test the relevance of alternative models (excellently reviewed in
Haddad, Hoddinott, and Alderman 1997, and Doss 1996) indicate a considerable
justification for rejecting the unitary model, or at least for "shifting the burden of proof"
to those defending it, even though there is no clear answer as to which alternative model
might be the most suitable.8 Rather, as Katz (1996, 19) argues, "unitary, cooperative,
noncooperative and `collective' decisionmaking rules may all coexist in the same
household," varying by the type of resource or expenditure.
How we characterize the household impinges not just on academic analysis but
also, critically, on policy. Policymakers in many countries, assuming a unitary model,
have typically directed resources to male household heads, assuming equitable
intrahousehold sharing of resources or benefits thereof. A bargaining model would
suggest that policies and resources be directed differently, taking account, say, of the

8
Some argue that since available data do not usually permit us to test hypotheses that could help us
choose between the bargaining and neoclassical household models, the analytically simpler neoclassical model
is preferable. This is not an adequate reason for dismissing the bargaining approach, but merely strengthens
the case for further data gathering. Also, as Katz (1996, 16) notes, "Even if the same predictions can be
generated ... in a unitary framework, it may be asked why parsimony and not descriptive accuracy is the
relevant ... criterion for the choice of model."
 8

gender of the recipient, insofar as the welfare, efficiency, and equity implications could
differ by gender. Also it would point policymakers (seeking to affect intrahousehold
allocations) to interventions in addition to price changes, such as legal and institutional
changes (see also Haddad, Hoddinott, and Alderman 1994).
While bargaining models have contributed in interesting ways to household
analysis, it is critical to think beyond the restrictions imposed by fully-specified models,
and to move toward a less restrictive formulation that incorporates qualitative aspects,
and greater complexity. In other words, the bargaining perspective or approach has
particular usefulness in examining gender relations, in the application of which we need
not be restricted to game-theoretic formulations (see, also, Seiz 1991). Some of these
aspects could no doubt be incorporated into formal models, but there would still be
limitations imposed by structure.
In any case, my purpose here is to focus, through the lens of gender, on some
dimensions that are critical to bargaining outcomes, but which most discussions of
household bargaining treat as exogenous and outside the realm of their analytical
specifications, such as the following:

• What determines intrahousehold bargaining power? Bargaining models

define bargaining power in terms of fallback positions, but their specification
of what factors impinge on these positions tends to be rather narrow: few
specify factors beyond income (earned or unearned); even fewer explore
qualitative aspects of power.
• Are there differences in the relative importance of factors that determine
fallback positions? Clearly, not all factors would carry equal weight.
• What is the role of social norms in determining bargaining power and in
setting the limits to what is bargained over? Again there is inadequate
discussion on this, as there is also on the possible endogeneity of the norms,
viz., of norms themselves being the subjects of bargaining;
 9

• How are bargaining processes and outcomes affected by differences in

individual perceptions (about needs, contributions, etc.) and pursuit of self-
interest? In particular, is women's relative deprivation due in part to their
failure to perceive their true self-interest, or to their being more altruistic
than men? Existing discussion on these questions is limited, and much of it
problematic. The possibilities of bargaining on behalf of others and of
coalitions within households are also not considered.
• What are the links between intrahousehold bargaining and bargaining outside
the household (e.g., in the market, the community, and the State)? And what
determines extrahousehold bargaining power?

In the sections that follow, I examine these neglected dimensions. Although many
of the illustrative examples are taken from rural South Asia, the issues discussed have
wider relevance.

DETERMINANTS OF INTRAHOUSEHOLD BARGAINING POWER

Any attempt to identify the determinants of bargaining outcomes must grapple with
several complexities. First, a wide range of factors could define a person's bargaining
power: some are quantifiable, such as individual economic assets; others are less so, such
as communal/external support systems, or social norms and institutions, or perceptions
about contributions and needs.
Second, some resources are both determinants of a person's bargaining power vis-à-
vis other resources, and themselves need to be bargained for. Take arable land. We
could argue that landowning women would have a stronger fallback position and
therefore greater bargaining power than landless women vis-à-vis the allocation of
household subsistence. Yet, to gain a share in arable land may itself require bargaining,
and a somewhat different set of factors would determine women's bargaining power in
 10

relation to land. Similarly, social norms both affect the outcomes of bargaining and can
themselves be subjects of bargaining.
Third, in bargaining for something like a share in arable land, insofar as the social
or legal legitimacy of any share at all for women may first need to be established, the
outcomes of intrahousehold bargaining would be preconditioned by the outcomes of
extrahousehold bargaining with the community and the State (as elaborated later).
Fourth, the outcomes of bargaining at one point in time, by strengthening or
weakening a person's fallback position, could affect the outcomes of bargaining at a later
point in time. For instance, assets accumulated in one round of bargaining would affect
the threat point and, therefore, outcomes in the next round. Such "iterative" bargaining
could be between the same parties, or between different parties (e.g., a property
settlement favoring a widow or divorcee in one marriage could strengthen her bargaining
power in a subsequent marriage); and it could apply to both the short term and the long
term (see, also, Sen 1990, for examples).
Fifth, the outcomes of bargaining need not result from an explicit process of
negotiation between the parties; they could even result from implicit differences in
bargaining power. For instance, a man in north India rarely has to tell his sister that he
will break all contact with her if she demands her share of ancestral land. The fact that he
can do so at low economic and social cost to himself, but at high potential cost to her,
may be enough for her to forego her claim. Indeed, the fact that one party can get a
favorable outcome without open contestation suggests a considerable bargaining power.
Sixth, in a limited sense, relative bargaining power within the household/family
could be revealed in who participates in decisionmaking and about what. Hence, women
who participate in decisionmaking concerning, say, agricultural production or cash
expenditure in the home may be said to have greater bargaining strength than those
excluded from such decisionmaking altogether. But more fundamentally, relative
bargaining power is revealed in whose interests prevail in the decisions made, namely in
final outcomes: in the intra-family distribution of resources, goods, services, and tasks,
 11

the treatment meted out by family members, the control exercised over resources, and so
on.
Consider some of these aspects in more detail.

Bargaining for Subsistence Within the Family

What determines a woman's bargaining power within the family in relation to

subsistence needs such as food and health care? Sen (1981), in his entitlement approach
to famine, highlights two factors as significant in determining a person's (or a family's)
ability to command subsistence goods (including food) and services: endowments (what a
person owns, such as assets, labor power, etc.) and the exchange entitlement mapping (the
exchange possibilities that exist through production and trade, which determine the
consumption set available to a person with given endowments).9 Typically for rural
families, the most important endowments would be arable land and ability to labor; and
the exchange entitlements would be determined by the possibilities of using these
endowments for production and trade (including seeking employment, in the case of
labor), and by the structure of factor and commodity prices.
However, we could extend this list to incorporate other entitlements that do not
derive from private ownership nor, usually, from market exchange. At least three appear
important: traditional rights in communal resources, traditional social support systems,
and support from the State and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).10 Further,
impinging on all the factors mentioned would be social norms embodying accepted

9
Sen, in this context, does not expand on how families or individuals arrive at a certain endowment
position.
10
The category, NGOs, is broadly used here to include organizations that differ in size, the social
backgrounds of their members, their objectives, ideological positions, issues taken up, forms of operation, and
so on. Some might have a mass base, others small memberships. I will use the term "gender-progressive"
NGOs or groups for those whose activities are centrally or partially aimed at reducing gender inequities. This
could include organizations with mixed (male and female) membership but with a specific gender focus in their
activities, as well as women's groups promoting gender-specific programs. "Gender-retrogressive" implies the
opposite.
 12

notions about the division of labor, resources, etc., and social perceptions about
contributions, needs, and abilities (and therefore about who deserves what).
It could thus be suggested that a rural person's bargaining strength within the family
vis-à-vis subsistence needs would depend (given the exchange entitlement mapping)
especially on eight factors:

1. ownership of and control over assets, especially arable land;

2. access to employment and other income-earning means;
3. access to communal resources such as those of village commons and forests;
4. access to traditional social support systems such as of patronage, kinship,
caste groupings, etc;
5. support from NGOs;
6. support from the State;
7. social perceptions about needs, contributions, and other determinants of
deservedness; and
8. social norms.

These factors would individually and interactively affect a person's ability to fulfil
subsistence needs outside the family. The premise here is that the greater a person's
ability to physically survive outside the family, the greater would be her/his bargaining
power over subsistence within the family (although, as will be elaborated below, factors
such as norms and perceptions also affect bargaining power independently of the fallback
position). Inequalities among family members in respect of these factors would place
 13

some members in a weaker bargaining position relative to others.11 Gender is one

significant basis of such inequality.12
While my focus here is on the determinants of well-being if cooperation should
fail, it is important to note that many of the factors that determine a person's fallback
position also influence her/his ability to make contributions within the relationship. If a
woman loses her job or her assets, it both worsens her fallback position and diminishes
the income she can bring into the family. This dual effect can lead to marriage
dissolution and family abandonment in periods of severe crisis (such as a famine), as
discussed further below.
These determinants of bargaining power can complement or substitute for one
another. The significance of the first two factors, namely command over property
(especially land) and access to employment, in strengthening a rural person's survival
ability outside the family, is self-evident; that of access to communal resources and
various external support systems needs some elaboration, as do social perceptions and
social norms.
In rural economies, village commons (VCs) and State forests are especially
important for two reasons: one, they provide a wide range of items essential for daily use,
especially to the poor whose dependence becomes critical during drought and famines
(Agarwal 1990); and two, their products, typically gathered by women and children

11
This approach could be adapted to the situation where persons withdraw into separate noncooperative
spheres of activity, while maintaining some "spheres of cooperation" vis-à-vis goods and services that are
jointly produced and/or consumed.
12
Some suggest that women's childbearing and child-rearing responsibilities could also weaken their
household bargaining position (e.g., Anne Marie Goetz, personal communication, Sussex, 1992). In my view
the effect of this factor is difficult to judge a priori. In South Asia, for instance, on the one hand, frequent
pregnancies and caring for a large number of young children could reduce women's bargaining power, say by
limiting their employment options. On the other hand, childlessness, equated with barrenness, could lead to
divorce (Cain 1988). Again having sons could increase a woman's bargaining power, but having only
daughters could weaken it. Also, the extent of women's reproductive responsibilities varies across cultures,
and much depends on what autonomy a woman can exercise with regard to how many children she has, her
access to child-care support (through relatives or the State), and her husband's contribution to child care.
 14

(Agarwal 1991), provide women with an independent source of subsistence unmediated

by dependency relationships on men. Women usually have use rights in VCs by virtue of
their membership (through birth or marriage) in the village community, whereas their
access to the cash economy and (in areas of strong female seclusion) to the marketplace
itself may be constrained and dependent on the mediation of males (Agarwal 1994a).
Similarly, social support systems of patronage, kinship, caste groupings, and even
friendships (namely, various forms of "social capital") can prove critical during economic
crises. These support systems are constituted of relationships between persons or social
groups in which, usually, considerations other than the solely economic take precedence,
falling under the rubric of "the moral economy" (Scott 1976). They typically relate to
nonmarket transactions, such as interest-free credit from relatives or friends, or
intergenerational transfers between parents and children. Again, these support structures
can prove especially important for women (Agarwal 1990).
Other external systems of potential support, such as the State and NGOs, can add to
a person's intrahousehold bargaining power, both by a direct provisioning of subsistence
(e.g., widow's pensions), and indirectly by increasing access to employment, assets,
credit, infrastructure, etc. Many NGOs, in particular, have in recent years helped enhance
household subsistence possibilities in these and other ways, by helping people to
challenge biases in State laws, policies, and their implementation.
However, these interventions could either increase or decrease women's bargaining
power, depending on their gender bias. Organizations that enhance credit and income-
earning opportunities for women relative to men, such as the Grameen Bank in
Bangladesh and the Self-Employment Women's Association (SEWA) in India, would
strengthen women's bargaining power. NGO interventions that enhance only men's
access to land or credit would weaken women's bargaining power. The same holds for
 15

State interventions.13 Gender-progressive organizations, including women's groups, can

play a particularly important role in directing State policies and laws in women's favor.14
In other words, the first six factors listed, by impinging on women's and men's
subsistence opportunities and access to resources from outside the family, would affect
their bargaining power and so their access to subsistence within the family as well. The
last two factors, namely social perceptions and social norms, can affect subsistence
distribution both directly, in that intrahousehold allocations depend on perceptions about
deservedness and on prevailing norms of sharing within families, and indirectly by
impinging on the other six factors. Social norms is a vast issue and is therefore discussed
in a separate section. Consider that of social perceptions.

Social Perceptions and Bargaining Power

There can be, and not uncommonly is, a divergence between what a person actually
contributes, needs, or is able to do, and perceptions about her/his contributions, needs, or
abilities. In particular, a person's contributions may be undervalued because of her gender
or race. The work women do might be labeled "unskilled" and that which men do as
"skilled," simply because of their gender, even if the tasks done by both require equal
amounts of skill. Perceptions about contributions can also depend on how "visible" the
work is: home-based or unwaged work is often seen as less valuable than work that is

13
Most State interventions in relation to land have, in fact, tended to strengthen men's bargaining
power: land tends to be distributed to male heads of households in almost all land reform programs and
resettlement schemes. NGO interventions typically replicate this bias. Credit interventions used to be similarly
male-biased, but this has changed in recent years, with more recognition being given both by the State and by
NGOs to women's independent credit needs.
14
For a definition of gender-progressive groups, see footnote 10. For the role such groups can play,
see, especially, Agarwal (1994a). Folbre (1997) similarly emphasizes the role of what she terms "gender
coalitions."
 16

physically or monetarily more visible.15 Indeed, women's contributions to the household

are typically undervalued not just by family members, but often also by policymakers and
bureaucrats implementing development programs.16
Similarly, perceptions about needs may differ from actual needs. In many parts of
the world, women's needs are underplayed and assumed to be subordinate to or even
synonymous with the "family's" needs, while for men, the distinction between family and
personal needs is widely accepted and sanctioned.
Such perceptions affect intrahousehold allocations and bargaining power.
Systematic undervaluation of women's contributions or needs, in a system where these are
important distributive principles, would reinforce gender-related deprivation. Women
and girls would receive less because their contributions to the household are seen as being
less valuable than that of men or boys—what Sen (1990) terms "perceived contribution
response"17—and/or because they are seen as needing less (what one could term
"perceived need response"). Here, strengthening the fallback position of a rural woman,
by providing her better access to village commons, may have less than the desired effect,
if what she gathers (as nonmonetized items) is seen as having less value than the cash a
man brings in (even if the imputed value of the gathered items is more). Such
undervaluation is not confined to developing countries. The Western feminist debate on
"wages for housework" arose from the recognition that unwaged work was "invisible" and
perceived as having little value. England and Kilbourne (1990), drawing from studies of
American households, argue that women who earn cash have more bargaining power than
those who are solely housewives, because of, among other things, the cultural devaluation
of housework. Women's entry into wage labor could thus be one way of increasing their

15
See, especially, Agarwal (1986) and Sen (1990).
16
See, for example, Abdullah and Zeidenstein (1982), and Goetz (1990).
17
Sen focuses only on "contributions" as the principle underlying distribution. In fact, as noted below,
notions about legitimate shares can stem from a range of principles, of which contributions is but one: see,
for example, Engle and Nieves (1993), and Farmer and Teifenthaler (1995).
 17

intra-family bargaining power not just directly, but indirectly, by increasing the perceived
legitimacy of their claims (see, also, Sen 1990).
At the same time, a woman's bargaining power outside the household, say in the
labor market, is also affected by perceptions; for example, solely on account of her
gender, she may be perceived as having lesser ability or commitment, or to be only a
supplementary earner. Gender, as is race, has been known to define perceptions about
abilities, and to lead to discriminatory hiring and payment practices. Rural women in
many parts of South Asia, for instance, are paid less than men even for the same tasks, on
the assumption that women are less productive, although few productivity studies have
been conducted, and some that exist show the contrary (Agarwal 1983). Incorrect
perceptions can thus reduce a woman's bargaining power in relation to family subsistence,
not only by leading to an underestimation of her needs and an undervaluation of her
waged contributions, but also by affecting her "worth" in the labor market, thus limiting
the mentioned potential advantage of her seeking waged work.
It may be noted that perceptions impinge on social norms but are not the same as
social norms. For instance, norms might define on what principles family food is
shared—say, contributions and/or needs, but the translation of those norms into
allocations would depend not just on actual, but perceived contributions and needs.
Social norms relate to customs that are established. Incorrect perceptions could get
institutionalized as social norms, such as in systematically lower wage rates or lower
subsistence allocations for women than men. But perceptions would usually be only one
among several factors influencing norms, while also affecting bargaining power
independently of norms. Like norms, perceptions may themselves be subject to
contestation and change.

Do All Factors Carry Equal Weight?

Clearly, not all factors affect bargaining power in equal extent. However, even the
few economic studies that list factors that might affect intrahousehold bargaining power
 18

do not discuss the need for setting priorities.18 Identifying the more critical factors (these
would vary by context) is especially important for policy.
In agrarian economies, for instance, of the first six factors listed as affecting
bargaining for subsistence, effective command over landed property holds a privileged
position for several reasons. For illustration, consider evidence from rural South Asia,
although the points made are of wider relevance. First, the rapid decline in forests and
VCs, especially in semi-arid areas, is effectively eroding this source of supplementary
economic support for the poor, and especially for women (Agarwal 1991). Second,
erosion is also occurring in social support systems of patronage, kinship, and caste
groupings.19 The decline in kin support is especially apparent among communities that
have become poorer over time, the effects being dramatic in tribal communities
traditionally characterized by a high degree of communal and intra-gender cooperation in
work and social life. Among them, and elsewhere, the worst affected are usually women,
especially the widowed and aged.20
Third, the returns from wage employment and other income-earning means are
themselves often linked with access to land; for instance, rural nonfarm earnings in South
Asia are substantially greater among households with some land, relative to the totally
landless (Chadha 1992; Islam 1986), as is the probability of women finding wage
employment (Ryan and Ghodake 1980; Lipton 1983). Families with some land also have
a higher reserve price for their labor, which can push up aggregate wage rates (Raj and
Tharakan 1983; Bardhan 1984). Effective rights in land can thus strengthen women's

18
Guyer (1997), an anthropologist among economists, does, however, implicitly prioritize wealth and
assets.
19
See Breman (1985) and Commander (1983) on eroding patron-client relationships, and Cain,
Khanam, and Nahar (1979), Drèze (1990), Fernandes and Menon (1987), Jansen (1983), and Kabeer (1994)
on declining support from kin.
20
See Agarwal (1990), Drèze (1990), Fernandes and Menon (1987), Jansen (1983), and White (1992).
 19

fallback position not only directly, but also indirectly, by improving returns from other
income sources.
Fourth, especially the elderly are able to use property, in particular, landed
property, to bargain for better care and support from their families (Sharma and Dak
1987; Raj and Prasad 1971). For some, the mere fact of possessing land helps; others
may use landed property and valuables for explicit bargaining, promising favor to those
family members who serve them best, as elderly women are noted to do in northern India
(Sharma and Dak 1987). Migrant children's remittances to parents may also be associated
positively with the latter's property status.21
Fifth, land rights could prove crucial during severe subsistence crises, as during
drought and famine. In such contexts, poor rural households first dispose of assets such
as jewelry, household utensils, and small animals, keeping the productive
resource—land—until the last (Agarwal 1990). While disposing of the more liquid assets
first makes economic sense at the household level, it also has important gender
implications. The items noted to be disposed of first are often the only ones a woman
owns, while land is typically in men's names. As a result, women tend to be left with
both a weaker fallback position than men, and a more diminished ability to contribute to
family income. During famines, an oft-noted outcome of this shift in bargaining power
and contributions is the abandonment of wives and children by men (whose outside
options, especially where they have land, do not deteriorate in equal degree).22

21
For example, Lucas and Stark (1985) found this in relation to sons' remittances to parents in a study
for Botswana.
22
On this point, Dasgupta (1993, 329) misinterprets my paper on drought and famine (Agarwal 1990)
in attributing to me the argument that a collapse of the woman's fallback position relative to her husband's in
itself leads to her being abandoned in a famine. As I have stressed, a woman's fallback position here
diminishes simultaneously with her potential contribution to family income, since factors such as her ownership
of assets and access to employment affect both her fallback position and her ability to contribute economically
to the family's well-being. Hence, in a severe crisis, while the sharp decline in the wife's fallback position may
improve the husband's bargaining situation, this would provide him little realizable advantage, given the
simultaneous (and severe) decline in her ability to contribute to joint well-being, so that it would still be in his
economic interest to abandon her.
 20

Sixth, land rights can, over time, help women negotiate less restrictive social norms
and better treatment from husbands. The situation of South Asian women who
traditionally had rights in land, as among communities that practiced matrilineal or
bilateral inheritance, is indicative.23 They enjoyed substantial freedom of movement and
interaction outside the home, often controlled the household food stores, and, as observed
among the matrilineal Khasis of northeast India, ate before their husbands, if the latter
were out late (Agarwal 1994a). All this is in contrast to the patrilineal northwest, where
women's lives are circumscribed in numerous ways that limit their livelihood
opportunities. Similarly, women who were landless, but who have, in recent years,
acquired independent plots from the government or through NGO support, report an
enhanced sense of economic security and self confidence (and therefore negotiating
ability), and improved treatment from husbands and kin (Agarwal 1994a).
In other words, command over private land could strengthen rural women's
bargaining power in ways that merely enhancing wage employment opportunities, or
stemming the erosion of common property resources, would not. Although illustrated by
South Asian evidence, arable land carries similar weight for rural women in Africa and
Latin America.24 In more urban industrial contexts, however, property other than land
would be of greater importance. But the general point is that prioritizing/ weighting
factors that affect bargaining power is important both analytically and for policy.
This raises an additional issue: what affects bargaining outcomes of the prioritized
factors, say of family land, which are exogenous in some contexts and endogenous in
others.

23
Under bilateral inheritance, ancestral property passes to and through both sons and daughters; under
matrilineal inheritance, ancestral property passes through the female line. Under patrilineal inheritance,
ancestral property passes through the male line. The complex workings of these inheritance systems in South
Asia are detailed in Agarwal (1994a).
24
See, among others, Davidson (1988), Koopman (1991), and Quisumbing (1994) for Africa; and
Deere (1985) for Latin America. Also, in relation to famines, Watts (1983) notes that in Nigeria, small
livestock, typically owned by women, are among the first casualties, and Vaughan (1987) describes women's
increasing dependence on men, due to reduced outside options, during the Malawi famine.
 21

Bargaining over Family Land

Contestation over subsistence resources, given one's endowments, is only one level
of bargaining. A second, more basic one, involves bargaining over the endowments
themselves. At this level, the factors determining women's bargaining power become
even more complex. For instance, a daughter's ability to successfully claim a share in
parental landed property (assuming she is not voluntarily given it) is likely to depend
especially on the following factors:25

• the existing inheritance laws;

• the social legitimacy of her claim, that is, whether the claim (even if legally
valid) is perceived as socially valid by her community;
• her educational status and legal literacy;
• her access to government officials who administer land-related matters,
register land inheritance claims, etc;
• her access to economic and social resources for survival outside the support
systems provided by contending claimants such as brothers or kin; and
• her economic and physical access to legal machinery.

In other words, individual women's attempts to acquire a share in family land could
require interlinked contestation outside the household as well, such as contestation with
the community to establish social legitimacy for women's claims to independent land
rights, contestation with the State to make inheritance laws gender equal and to ensure
their better implementation, and so on.
Gender differences in intrahousehold bargaining power are thus linked with the
person's extrahousehold bargaining power, such as with the community and the State.

25
For an empirical elaboration of the relevance of these factors in the context of South Asia, see
Agarwal (1994a).
 22

This would be especially so in contestation over landed property, since control over
arable land helps define (and is also defined by) wider access to economic, social, and
political power (Agarwal 1994a). What factors might affect women's bargaining power
in the market, the community, and the State are discussed later.

SOCIAL NORMS

In the literature on intrahousehold economics, only a few authors explicitly

recognize the importance of social norms and model them. Of those that do, some treat
them as exogenous (Lundberg and Pollak 1993), while a few recognize the possibility of
their being endogenous (e.g., Agarwal 1994a; Folbre 1995, 1997; Hart 1993; Katz 1996).
But major gaps remain in spelling out the nature and specifics of social norms in
particular contexts, and how they may affect bargaining. This section seeks to fill some
of these gaps.
Norms could impinge on bargaining in at least four ways:

• They set limits on what can be bargained about.

• They are a determinant of or constraint to bargaining power;
• They affect how the process of bargaining is conducted, e.g., covertly or
overtly, aggressively or quietly.
• They constitute a factor to be bargained over, that is, social norms can be
endogenous in that they can themselves be subject to negotiation and change.

Norms as Limits to What Can Be Bargained About

To begin with, norms set the limits to bargaining. They can define which issues
can legitimately be bargained over, and which fall in the arena of the uncontestable. At
any given time, for a given society, some decisions would fall in the realm of what the
French sociologist Bourdieu (1977: 167-70) terms "doxa"—that which is accepted as a
 23

natural and self-evident part of the social order, which goes without saying and is not
open to questioning or contestation—the "undiscussed, unnamed, admitted without
argument or scrutiny." A good deal of what is justified in the name of "tradition" would
fall in this category: "the tradition is silent, not least about itself as tradition." In contrast
to doxa is the "field of opinion, of that which is explicitly questioned," "the locus of the
confrontation of competing discourses."26
In the present context, doxa could include widely accepted norms and practices.
Social norms enter virtually every sphere of activity. They may define what category of
persons cannot intermarry (e.g., most patrilineal north Indian Hindus forbid marriages to
close kin or within the village); the gender division of labor within the home (e.g.,
housework and child care are usually seen as women's responsibilities); the gender
division of labor outside the home (task specification and occupational segregation is
common in both rural and urban employment, in most countries); whether women should
work outside the home (female seclusion norms restrict this among some Hindu and
many Muslim communities); who can participate most in household decisionmaking
(e.g., older daughters-in-law who have sons may have more say than new brides); by what
criterion society's resources should be shared, e.g., "to each according to ability" or "to
each according to need"; and so on.
These limits to bargaining may favor group over individual interests, or favor some
groups over others (say men over women), or favor some individuals over others (say
older women over younger). They can draw legitimacy from religious or other beliefs.
And they can reflect the dominant perceptions of the needs and rights of people prevailing
in a community.

26
Within "the field of opinion," Bourdieu further distinguishes between orthodoxy and heterodoxy.
He does not fully spell out this distinction, but implies that orthodoxy would be at one end of the spectrum and
heterodoxy at the other, the former representing one dominant system of beliefs and the latter representing
several alternative systems of beliefs.
 24

Somewhat less restrictively, norms may set limits to bargaining by admitting

something as contestable but restricting the range of contestation: for instance, that males
should eat before females and get the better quality food may be a norm in some societies,
but negotiations may be possible over what allocational criterion— contributions, needs,
equality, or investment (especially in children)27—is used to make allocations among the
males, or among the females.28
The complexity of bargaining is less if the social legitimacy of a person's claim to
some share of the contested item is recognized and only the size of that share is in
dispute, than if the legitimacy of claiming any share at all is questioned. For instance, the
rights of female family members to basic subsistence are usually not in dispute, although
the proportionate shares may be, while any share for them in ancestral land might be
opposed in some communities and placed outside the arena of bargaining.
The overarching nature of norms suggests that, for a start, contestation would be
necessary to enlarge the range of issues that can be bargained over, and even to admit
specific persons as legitimate contestants.

Norms as Determinants of or Constraints to Bargaining Power

The kinds of restrictions to bargaining outlined above, in turn, affect women's

bargaining power within the household. Consider, for instance, bargaining for better
subsistence. Social norms (as suggested earlier) often define by what principles family

27
In a study of food distribution among Guatemalan households, Engle and Nieves (1993) found
considerable variation among families in the principles underlying observed distribution. See, also, Farmer
and Teifenthaler (1995) for a discussion on some of the other criteria. The principles underlying
intrahousehold distribution of subsistence are not only of academic interest, but have a bearing on public policy
interventions, such as child subsidies and school feeding programs.
28
Of course, even equality as a criterion could translate into several possible allocations: Farmer and
Teifenthaler (1995) suggest at least six different ways by which food might be allocated to children, all in
keeping with particular notions of equality that the parents might hold. For instance, parents may care about
equitable food inputs that affect health or about equitable health outcomes, and each of these could be
measured in terms of absolute equality, proportionate equality, or equality of shortfalls. But these choices
would typically reflect individual judgments, rather than socially-established norms.
 25

food may be shared. Food allocation norms (quantity or quality of food, or who eats first)
favoring males, found, for instance, in northern South Asia, would limit women's and girl
children's ability to bargain for better shares. Or the criteria justifying distributions—say,
individual contributions to family income or well-being, individual needs, or investment
in a person's future earning capacity—may themselves be gender-neutral, but if (as
suggested earlier) perceptions about contributions, needs, etc., are biased against females,
this again would reduce women's bargaining ability.
Social norms can also weaken women's intrahousehold bargaining position (over
subsistence and other resources) by restricting their earning possibilities in various ways,
such as by discouraging (or even preventing) them from working outside the home,
limiting the range of tasks they may perform, institutionalizing lower wages for them than
for men, restricting their presence in public spaces and thus their access to markets and
the marketplace, defining child care as their responsibility and so limiting their mobility
and job options, ideologically constructing them as dependents and men as
breadwinners,29 and so on.
Similarly, norms can restrict a woman's bargaining power in relation to family land
by providing justifications for upholding gender-unequal property laws; by predefining
men as household heads and thus as the appropriate recipients of land under land reform
and resettlement programs; by necessitating that women be married into distant villages
and thus limiting their ability to claim and manage any share they inherit from parents; by
purdah practices that restrict their access to legal, administrative, and economic
institutions, and so on (for elaboration, see Agarwal 1994a).
Norms also affect bargaining power by defining the extent of voice a person has
within the household (as illustrated further below), and by impinging on the possibility of

29
See Goldin (1990) for an interesting historical account of women workers in the United States being
fired upon marriage, and married women not being hired by many manufacturing firms in the 1940s. She
notes: "Social consensus had been formed on the necessity for married women to remain at home with their
children and on the need for their husbands to support them" (p. 6).
 26

"exit."30 For instance, women's exit options in marriage would depend not only on their
economic prospects outside marriage, but on the social acceptability of divorced women,
and their possibilities of remarriage (their worth in the "marriage market"). Divorced and
widowed women, older women, and women with children are typically less "eligible"
than men with these characteristics.

Norms and How Bargaining Is Conducted

Mediated by gender, age, and marital status, social norms often define how
household members should conduct themselves. In many societies, behavior that is
assertive and loud is much more tolerated in boys and men than in girls and women. And
among women, assertiveness is more accepted from older women than younger ones,
from mothers-in-law than young daughters-in-law, and from daughters than daughters-in-
law.
Gendered norms thus set the stage for the form that bargaining can take, even
within the marketplace. Fish trading in South India, for instance, true to its proverbial
reputation, is typically associated with loud haggling and aggressive marketing. The
women who earn a livelihood by this means risk being dubbed as "masculine" and being
summarily rejected as role models by their educated daughters (Ram 1989). At times, the
behavior of women fish vendors is even seen by the village men as sexually provocative,
inviting verbal or physical abuse (Roy and Dewan 1988).
Within the household again, the cultural construction of appropriate female
behavior affects their ability to bargain. For instance, Tibeto-Burman women of Nepal,
who are not subject to purdah, enjoy considerable freedom of movement and are
significant and visible participants in all types of economic activity, including agriculture
and trading. But even they are subject to subtle aspects of gendered behavioral norms.

30
On "voice" or "exit" as ways of expressing discontent within an organization, see Hirschman (1970)
and footnote 54. See Agarwal (1994a), Carter and Katz (1997), and England and Kilbourne (1990) for
applications of these concepts to intrahousehold bargaining.
 27

These norms impinge, among other things, on women's ability to negotiate their rights,
including property claims within the family.
Consider, for illustration, March's (1988, 19-20) description of the response of a
Tamang (Tibeto-Burman) woman, Nhanu, when her family property was being divided.
Nhanu had left in her parent's home an expensive bronze drinking bowl, purchased from
the profits of her trading expeditions. After her father's death, when the brothers were
dividing the family property, she described the event as follows:

I sat there quietly, without saying a word, just sitting and watching as they
each took their separate shares of the family property.

[Whispering] The bronze drinking bowl that I had bought that time in
Kathmandu was given out in my younger brother's—Busru's father's—share.

Well! While they were dividing the shares, I thought to myself, "Oh dear!
My bronze drinking bowl, the one I bought from the efforts of my trips to
Kerong and Kathmandu, has been given out in Busru's father's share!" But I
continued to sit there quietly.

[Loudly] Then well! my second younger brother came up to get his share.
He said, "That bronze drinking bowl must be given to Elder Sister! That's the
one she bought with the gallon measure of salt she was given after going to
Kerong! The only thing that she bought from that salt was that bronze
drinking bowl; that bowl's hers! She didn't waste even one paisa on that trip."

And then, right then!, he reached out and in a single sweep of his arm, Lo! he
grabbed that bronze drinking bowl back and set it in a separate pile for me.
 28

Since he spoke up, they gave it to me and I took that bronze drinking bowl
away with me [laughing].31

Nhanu's reticence (which could well have cost her the bowl) contrasts with the
volubility of her brothers, and underlines expected differences in male and female
behavior even in communities where women are not explicitly constrained from asserting
themselves.
In cultures or contexts where social norms stifle explicit bargaining or voice,
women may be pushed to using implicit forms of contestation. Persistent complaining,
pleading ill-health, playing off male affines and consanguines against each other,
threatening to return to the natal home, withdrawing into silence, and withholding sex
from husbands, are all means by which women are noted to bargain within the family, not
only in South Asia, but elsewhere, as in Latin America and the United States.32 These
can, however, prove less effective in many contexts than more explicit forms of
bargaining.

Bargaining over Social Norms

Conventionally, economists assume that individual preferences and social norms

are exogenously given. In bargaining models, too, when social norms have been
introduced as factors, as by Lundberg and Pollak (1993), they have been assumed to be
exogenous, although rare analytical descriptions recognize their endogeneity (Folbre
1995; Agarwal 1994a). In fact, social norms are not immutable and are themselves

31
In the above quotations, the insertions are as given in March's paper.
32
For South Asia, see Arens and Van Beurden (1977), Bennett (1983) Mandelbaum (1988), and Pastner
(1974). For Mexico, see Roldan (1988). For the United States, see Zelizer (1994), who notes that in the early
twentieth century, when domestic money was still a husband's property, "a wife's chances of additional cash
were limited to ... asking, cajoling, downright begging, and even practicing sexual blackmail. If these
techniques failed, there was also a repertoire of underground financial strategies, ranging from home pocket-
picking to padding bills" (page 141).
 29

subject to bargaining and change, even if the time horizon for changing some types of
norms may be a long one.
Indeed, a good deal of what is socially passed off as natural and indisputable,
including women's roles and modes of behavior, may be the outcomes of past ideological
struggles. To shift what has long been taken for granted by a community into the arena of
contestation and discourse (from "doxa" to "heterodoxy") may therefore itself require
bargaining. Gaining acceptance for the idea that the inequities women suffer are not
biologically rooted but socially constructed would be a part of this process, as would
proposing how gender relations can be differently constructed.
In relation to bargaining over social norms, there are three points of particular note:
one, the role of economic factors in pushing people to challenge norms; two, the role of
groups (as opposed to individuals) in enhancing people's ability to challenge norms; and
three, the interactive nature of bargaining within and outside the household in effectively
challenging social norms. (Virtually by definition, the arena of bargaining over norms
has to extend beyond the household, since for ideas and practices to become "norms"
requires their acceptance beyond the individual household.)
All these aspects are revealed when we examine contestation over purdah norms in
the predominantly Muslim societies of Bangladesh and Pakistan. In these societies, as
indeed in many other parts of South Asia, women caught in the poverty trap face
conflicting choices between survival needs and social status within the community.
Many resolve this dilemma by taking up income-generating work, some within the home,
others outside it. The implications vary accordingly. Women working at home in
individual isolation are unable to challenge purdah (Shaheed 1989), while those working
in urban factories are beginning to do so. Garment workers in Dhaka city argue: "The
best purdah is the burkah [veil] within oneself, the burkah of the mind. People only say
that working violates purdah in order to keep women down" (Rahela, in Kabeer 1991,
16).
 30

It is, however, the collective challenge posed by women as part of an organized

group that is found to best facilitate this process of change, not least because those whom
they need to oppose are often gender-retrogressive groups seeking to maintain, even
define, specific norms. In Bangladeshi villages, women members of the Bangladesh
Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) (an NGO seeking to improve the economic and
social position of the rural poor through group schemes for credit and income-generation)
are beginning to question the legitimacy of purdah itself, as something that is defined by
the elite:

When the women from rich households need to go to the town to appear in
court, even to remain in town for 3-4 days at a time, this is sanctioned as
[within the norms of] purdah. When women from a BRAC-organized group
want to go ... even for a day, to attend a workshop or meeting ... [t]heir
action is condemned as bepurdah. The norms of purdah that may be relaxed
for the wives of the rich can, just as easily and quickly, be clamped down on
the women of other households (a BRAC woman, cited in Chen 1983, 73).

Further:

The mullahs or religious leaders have some say on what is purdah or

bepurdah but it is village leaders who have the final say. The mullahs, upon
request from the elders, will start the rumour that such-and-such action or
behavior is bepurdah.... In this way, the rich and elders (through the
religious leaders) can determine what work is suitable or not suitable for
women to perform (a BRAC woman, cited in Chen 1983, 73).
 31

On the one hand, economic necessity has created the impulse to challenge these
restricting norms: "We do not listen to the mullahs anymore. They do not give us even a
quarter kilo of rice" (Chen 1983. 175-177).
On the other hand, group solidarity within BRAC has clearly strengthened women's
ability to bargain both within the household and with the community. Some BRAC
women narrate their experiences as follows (Chen 1983, 177, 165):

Now nobody talks ill of us. They say 'they have formed a group and now
they earn money. It is good.'

Before the village elders and union-council members abused and threatened
us for joining the group, now they are silent.... Before we did not understand
our ways, now we understand profit and loss.... Before we did not know our
rights to rations and medical services, now we are conscious and exert
pressure to receive our due.... Before we did not go outside our homes, but
now we work in the field and go to the town.... Before our minds were rusty,
now they shine.

Women also report that, as a result of their economic contributions and group strength,
their husbands are now less opposed to them joining BRAC, and are also less physically
and verbally abusive, more willing to allow them freedom of movement, and more
tolerant toward their interaction with male strangers in work contexts. In other words,
there has been a loosening of restrictive social norms both within the home and outside it.
Economic analysis that treats purdah norms as exogenous, for instance in
specifications of female labor supply functions, would thus be inadequate insofar as
women who undertake income-generating work are able to contest and redefine the
norms, thereby highlighting their endogeneity. Contestations around other social norms
similarly warrant examination.
 32

What Affects Bargaining over Norms?

We can surmise from the above that the ability of persons to challenge norms that
go against their self-interest would depend on at least three factors: their economic
situation; the link between command over property and control over institutions that
shape gender ideology; and group strength. The latter two aspects need further
elaboration.
First, those who own and/or control wealth-generating property can exercise
substantial direct and indirect control over the principal institutions that shape ideology,
such as educational and religious establishments and the media (defined broadly to
include newspapers, TV, radio, film, theater, as well as literature and the arts). These can
influence social norms in either gender-progressive or gender-retrogressive directions.
At the local level, BRAC women's observation that the rich and the village leaders
are able to define purdah norms is also striking. It links economic and political power
with the ability to bend religious ideologies and social norms to one's own purpose.
Some writers, while recognizing that social norms can be contested, locate the
contestation perhaps too much in ideology and give inadequate weight to the links
between gender ideologies and economic inequalities, or to economic inequalities as a
significant (although not sole) determinant of relative male-female power within (and
beyond) the household. Moore (1991, 8-9), for instance, notes: "[T]he relations of
domination and subordination which are at the base of gender inequalities within the
household cannot be explained as a simple outcome of economic inequalities," and
further that "bargaining and negotiation between women and men... are often about
definitions and interpretations, and it is for this reason that gender relations are always
involved with power." But if power is not to be seen as a thing in itself, we do need to
ask: of what is this power constituted, and what is its source? Here the interactive effect
of the economic and political appears crucial. Economic inequalities, while not the only
influence, do usually play a critical role in structuring power relations, by giving some
people greater authority over definitions and interpretations than others. Here we might
 33

also link women's lesser command over property with the shaping of norms that
disadvantage them.
Equally, group solidarity and collective action appear critical for contesting social
norms, as is also apparent from the purdah-related examples. In fact, contestation over
norms may emerge as a by-product of forming groups for the more effective delivery of
economic programs. The experiences of the Grameen Bank and BRAC in Bangladesh, of
SEWA in India, and of many other groups, support this conclusion.33 One might say,
group organization "empowers" women to confront existing sources of inequality,
including those embodied in representations.34 As Fraser (1989, 166) notes: "[N]eeds
talk appears as a site of struggle where groups with unequal discursive (and
nondiscursive) resources compete to establish as hegemonic their respective
interpretations of legitimate social needs."35 Feminist critiques of school and university
curricula and texts, of the images and messages of modern media (radio, TV, film), of
religious myths and mythologies, and so on, are a part of this effort to redefine how
women's capabilities, needs, and rights are represented.36 But the influence of these
critiques is likely to depend on both the economic strength and the group strength of the
critics (see, also, Folbre 1994).

33
For the Grameen Bank, see Hossain (1988) and Rahman (1986); and for SEWA, see Rose (1992).
34
It has been argued by some (e.g., Bourdieu 1977) that the interest of the dominant groups would be
to maintain the space of the undiscussed, and that of the dominated to reduce it by exposing the arbitrariness
of the taken-for-granted, and by bringing issues hitherto seen as "private" into the public domain—that is, by
redefining the boundaries of doxa.
35
Fraser also elaborates on how discourses about women's needs tend to be structured by the power
relations between women and men.
36
For India, see Bhasin and Agarwal (1983), Chakravarti (1983), Kalia (1979), and Krishnan and Dighe
(1990).
 34

SELF-PERCEPTIONS, ALTRUISM, AND SELF-INTEREST

Formal household models assume fully aware, and typically self-interested,

individuals participating in the bargaining process. But what if some household members
do not act in their own interest and therefore do not bargain to their best advantage?
For instance, Sen (1990) argues that the outcome of bargaining will be less
favorable to a person the less value s/he attaches to her/his own well-being relative to the
well-being of others ("perceived interest response"), and that this tends to be especially so
in "traditional societies" such as India, where women may tend not to think in terms of
self-interest or of their individual well-being:

[I]nsofar as intrafamily divisions involve significant inequalities in the

allotment of food, medical attention, health care, and the like (often
unfavorable to the well-being—even survival—of women), the lack of
perception of personal interest combined with a great concern for family
welfare is, of course, just the kind of attitude that helps to sustain the
traditional inequalities. There is much evidence in history that acute
inequalities often survive precisely by making allies out of the deprived. The
underdog comes to accept the legitimacy of the unequal order and becomes
an implicit accomplice (Sen 1990, 126, emphasis mine).

Some other scholars argue that women are, on average, more altruistic than men because
they have a less "separatist" self, or are socialized such that they are less willing than men
to drive hard bargains (see literature reviewed in England 1989); or that women are more
oriented toward fulfilling collective (especially children's) needs and men more oriented
toward personal goods (Beneria and Roldan 1987).
Are women less able to perceive their self-interest or are they more inclined toward
altruism than men? Would they therefore strike weaker bargains? Consider, first,
women's perception of self-interest.
 35

Do Women Suffer from False Perceptions?

The idea that women tend to have a less sharp perception of their individual
interests in societies such as India, that is, that they may suffer from a form of "false
consciousness" (in effect, making them complicit in perpetuating their unequal position)
is interesting, but debatable. The empirical evidence on this, while limited, points more
to the contrary.
Observationally, it is difficult to infer from people's overt behavior whether they
are conforming to an unequal order because they fully accept its legitimacy, or accept it
partially, or out of fear, or because they believe they have no other options. For
understanding women's perceptions about the inequitable nature of gender relations, we
therefore need to examine not only their overt acts of resistance, but the many covert
ways in which they express their disaffection. Empirical work that probes women's
covert responses, by recording their views in contexts where they can express themselves
freely, or by using participant observation methods to penetrate their "subculture,"
provides diverse examples of women's "everyday resistance"37 to intrahousehold
inequalities in resource distribution and control, and to their double work burdens. For
instance, there are numerous cases of South Asian rural women living under norms of
seclusion, covertly trying to get some cash that they can independently control, by secretly
undertaking income-earning activities, or by clandestinely selling small amounts of
household grain to safeguard their earnings from husbands and in-laws.38 Abdullah and
Zeidenstein (1982, 47), summarizing their many interviews in Bangladeshi villages,
observe:

37
See Scott (1985) for an elaboration of this term.
38
See Abdullah and Zeidenstein (1982), Jansen (1983), Lindholm (1982), Luschinsky (1962), Nath
(1984), and White (1992).
 36

Women told us usually what other women have done. For example, one
woman stocked rice in another woman's house so her husband could not
know she had it. Another woman had a neighbour raise a goat for her so her
husband would not know about it. Yet another woman has opened a pan
business with her young son and has told him to keep their earnings a secret
from the husband. Most women say that they hide their savings in holes in
the bamboo, in the roof, or under piles of cloth.

In the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) (Pakistan), Lindholm (1982, 201) notes:
"The husband considers this [i.e., a wife secretly selling grain] theft, but the wife
considers it her just dues for her work." In Sri Lanka, women coir workers "usually hide
their money in different parts of the house, so that, after a beating [the woman] can
disclose one place, thereby giving [the husband] the illusion she has handed all her
savings to him" (Risseeuw 1988, 278).
Although most women spend the money they so control on family subsistence,
some also spend it on their own needs (Abdullah and Zeidenstein 1982), or buy gifts for
family members to win their support and affection (Luschinsky 1962)—in other words, to
build "social capital." Yet others invest in goats and cows, which they keep in their
parental homes. This is especially typical of women living with their in-laws, where
earnings have to be shared with the extended household (Nath 1984). Unequal food-
sharing in a joint family may also be circumvented by women in ingenious ways,
including by holding clandestine picnics with women friends (Enslin 1990), or feigning
spirit possession to extract food items otherwise denied them (Khan 1983; also personal
observation in north India).
Equally, there are many indications from sociological studies, based on interviews
with peasant women, that women by no means readily accept the unequal gender division
of labor as legitimate, whether they covertly resist it or merely lament about it. White
(1992, 318), for instance, recounts how village women in Bangladesh may serve tea
 37

without milk to their husbands' friends so that the men would "not think she had nothing
better to do than make tea for them all day and should be discouraged from returning."
Peasant women in north India comment:

Agricultural labourer men help Jat men in the fields, but for Jat women it
only means more work. We have to cook more food and feed the labourers
as well.... Women should also have fixed hours of work (Horowitz and
Kishwar 1982, 17).

We women stay at home and do back-breaking work even if we are feeling

ill or if we are pregnant. There is no sick leave for us. But we do not have
any money of our own and when the men come home we have to cast our
eyes down and bow our heads (Sharma 1980, 207).

All these examples, in different ways, challenge any simple notion that women in
rural South Asia (or indeed elsewhere) have accepted the legitimacy of intrahousehold
inequality.39 The overt appearance of compliance ("cast our eyes down") need not mean
that women lack a correct perception of their best interests; rather, it can reflect a survival
strategy stemming from the constraints on their ability to act overtly in pursuit of those
interests (e.g., "we do not have any money of our own"). Hence, although I agree with
Sen (1990, 126) that "it can be a serious error to take the absence of protests and
questioning of inequality as evidence of the absence of that inequality," I would add that

39
Although my focus here is on women's resistance to intra-family gender inequalities, there are also
examples from Asia of women's covert resistance in the workplace. See, for instance, Ong (1983) on women
electronic factory workers in Malaysia claiming spirit possession to resist strict factory discipline; and
Gunawardena (1989) on frequent absenteeism, tardiness, and irregular work hours during peak cultivation
seasons among Sri Lanka's women plantation workers. Based on her 18 months of fieldwork, Gunawardena
notes: "Rural women ... simply did not comply to the dominant forces operating in their lives, but devised
means by which to skirt, side step, and bend the system, so to speak, to their advantage whenever possible."
She calls this strategizing for maximizing self-advantage.
 38

it can equally be an error to take the absence of overt protest as the absence of a
questioning of inequality. Compliance need not imply complicity.40
It is also likely that while on some issues women articulate or even believe in
ideologies that benefit men—for instance, maintaining that child care is women's
responsibility, on other issues there is observable opposition, such as towards family
authority structures, male control over cash, and domestic violence. Class factors might
also affect to what degree women see their self-interest as congruent to that of the
household. In northern South Asia, it is middle and rich peasant women (who benefit
from their husbands' properties and face greater social restrictions on outside
employment), rather than women agricultural laborers, who more typically insist that it is
important to have sons for continuing the lineage, and who have a more negative attitude
toward daughters (Horowitz and Kishwar 1982; Gardner 1990; personal observation).
In explaining gender inequalities, I would therefore place much less emphasis than
Sen does on women's incorrect perceptions of their self-interest, and much more on the
external constraints to their acting overtly in their self-interest. Or, to put it another way,
what is needed is less making women realize they deserve better, than having them
believe they can do better (by building their self-confidence, providing information, etc.),
and by helping them to, in fact, do better, through strengthening their bargaining position.
Grassroots organizing experience among women, in South Asia and elsewhere, also bears
this out.

40
Sen (1990), while recognizing that deprived groups may comply for many different reasons—habit,
hopelessness, resignation, etc., sees this as resulting in their willingness to accept the legitimacy of the
established order rather than in their covertly resisting that order. He writes (1990, 127): "Deprived groups
may be habituated to inequality, may be unaware of possibilities of social change, may be hopeless about
upliftment of objective circumstances of misery, may be resigned to fate, and may well be willing to accept the
legitimacy of the established order."
Bourdieu's (1977, 167-170) notion of "doxa" and Gramsci's (1971) characterization of "hegemony" are
also of interest in this context, but neither writer explicitly addresses or resolves this issue, although Gramsci's
writings suggest an emphasis on consent via internalization.
 39

Altruism or Self-Interest?

Unlike the notion of false perceptions, altruism (like self-interest) implies self-
awareness. But altruism, too, can affect bargaining outcomes. The question is: are
women more altruistic than men?
At one level, some of women's actions within families appear to support this view.
For instance, developing country evidence shows that poor women spend the income they
control largely on family needs rather than on personal needs.41 Again, women in South
Asia usually forfeit their inheritance claims in land in favor of brothers (Agarwal 1994a);
peasant women in north India and Bangladesh often eat last and least, while feeding the
best food to their sons and husbands;42 and so on. A number of writers explain such
actions in terms of women being socialized into acting more responsibly or more
altruistically than men.43 This may well be part of the explanation, but does not appear to
be all of it.
First, there are significant differences in such behavior patterns across regions and
communities. For instance, in contrast to women in the patrilineal-patrilocal northwest,
women among the matrilineal-matrilocal Khasis of the northeast (as noted)44 do not wait
for late-returning husbands before eating their evening meal.45 While this could reflect
differences in socialization, there are also clear variations in women's material conditions
in these two contexts, with the women from patrilineal families in the northwest being

41
See Beneria and Roldan (1987), Blumberg (1991), and Mencher (1988).
42
See Agarwal (1986), Drèze and Sen (1989), and Kabeer (1994).
43
See Papanek (1990), Sharma (1980), and White (1992).
44
Patrilocal: the wife takes up residence with the husband and (with or near) his patrilineal kin.
Matrilocal: the husband takes up residence with the wife and (with or near) her matrilineal kin.
45
Women in traditionally matrilineal and bilateral communities also often openly challenge their
husbands in ways that women in patrilineal communities usually do not (Agarwal 1994a).
 40

much more dependent on male members than those from matrilineal families in the
northeast.
Second, with limited outside options, women might well seek to maximize
"family" welfare, because it is in their long-term self-interest (even if it reduces their
immediate well-being), insofar as women are more dependent on the family for their
survival than are men. This dependence can be both economic and social. Socially, for
instance, where female seclusion is strong, women need male mediation to deal with
outside-family institutions; or widowhood may carry social disabilities (as in India) that
widowerhood does not. Also, women's dependence on the family can be longer lasting
than men's, given women's higher life expectancies. In the circumstances, women may
well have, or believe they have, no other option than favoring family members over
themselves.
Third, a woman investing more in sons than in daughters, as in northern South
Asia, appears to be acting more out of self-interest than altruism, when read in the light of
prevailing male advantage in labor markets and property rights, of women's need for male
mediation in the community, and of their dependence on sons in widowhood or old age.46
Indeed, one might ask: would altruism be so obviously sex-selective?
Thus, if women forego their claims in family assets in favor of sons, brothers, or
the extended family, or give gifts to kin to secure their affection, these could be
interpreted as ways by which women with a weak resource position seek to strengthen
their family ties in order to ensure economic and social support when they need it,
sacrificing their immediate welfare for future security.
A similar interpretation could fit the observation of an increasing number of
Bangladeshi village women today asserting (or proclaiming their intention to assert) their

46
See, especially, Papanek (1990) and Cain (1988) on the economic insecurity that north Indian and
Bangladeshi rural women, in particular, face in the absence of a son. Sons improve a woman's bargaining
power in her conjugal home with both the husband and his kin. Maher (1984) describes a similar situation in
Morocco.
 41

land rights, while a generation ago, their mothers gave up those rights in favor of
brothers. Here the mothers' behavior may appear altruistic and that of the daughters self-
interested. But given that, today, kin support structures are eroding, while earlier such
support was more readily forthcoming, both actions would be congruent with self-
interest.
In other words, if women expend their energies and earnings on the family and
extended kin, this appears to be as consistent with self-interest as with altruism. Or both
altruism and self-interest might be operating,47 although it is difficult to say in what
relative measure, and with what variation by context.
Stark (1995), in fact, argues that even altruistic behavior may be specifically
cultivated by parents ("preference shaping") out of self-interest, to ensure that their
children look after them in old age. To inculcate in the children "an internal enforcement
mechanism," parents may use the demonstration effect, by behaving in an altruistic
manner toward others in front of their children.
Finally, to the extent that both altruism and self-interest motivate behavior, this mix
need not be limited to women, although notions of self-sacrifice, nurturance, and so on,
are usually more emphasized for women than men (Papanek 1990).
The recognition that women, like men, may be motivated by self-interest (rather
than only or mainly by altruism), and that both women and men may be concerned with
individual as well as family welfare, even if in differing degrees, and even if their overt
actions place them on different sides of the spectrum, also focuses attention more directly
on the material constraints that shape women's behavior. It cautions against explanations
that are biological in their thrust ("women are by 'nature' more self-sacrificing"), or that

47
See also England (1989), Folbre (1994), Lucas and Stark (1985), and Sen (1982), the last
especially on the need to accommodate "commitment" as a part of behavior, commitment defined in terms of
"a person choosing an act that he believes will yield a lower level of personal welfare to him than an alternative
that is also available to him" (p. 92).
 42

presume deficiencies in women's self-perception or economic motivation,48 just as it

cautions against assuming that self-interest is the only motivating factor.
In terms of governmental as well as grassroots interventions, this recognition would
call for a strengthening of women's fallback position, so that they are less economically
and socially dependent on sons, husbands, or brothers, rather than locating solutions
primarily in raising women's awareness of what constitutes their well-being.

Altruism and Intrahousehold Coalitions

Bargaining models assume that each person will bargain on her/his own behalf
within the household. However, just as there can be interest coalitions outside the
household, so there can be interest coalitions within it, say, between co-wives in a
polygamous household, or between mothers and children, or between mothers and sons.
This also impinges on the question of bargaining and self-interest in an interesting
way. Even women who may be willing to sacrifice their own interest for that of family
members out of altruism may strike a hard bargain with their husbands on behalf of their
children. Indeed they may do so more overtly than if they were acting solely on their own
behalf; that is, women's concern with "family needs" need not include the husband's
needs. Some evidence from South Asia and Africa does suggest that women, not
uncommonly, see their interests as congruent to those of their dependent children and

48
Folbre and Hartmann (1988) note that by virtue of their association with the family and home,
women have come to be portrayed as relatively "non-economic," naturally altruistic creatures. This
portrayal has been used to justify women's lower wages and limited job opportunities, but "women's
commitment to family is not necessarily a function of their preferences or their productivity. It is often
constrained by the reluctance of other family members to help with housework and child care responsibilities"
(p. 195).
 43

potentially antagonistic to those of their husbands.49 In such contexts, there need be no

necessary contradiction between women's possible altruism on behalf of children and
their bargaining hard with their husbands.
In light of the above, the idea of women's false perceptions appears to have been
overstretched, as also are the arguments concerning the gender-specificity of altruism. At
the same time, it cannot be assumed (as most bargaining models do) that women and men
are motivated solely by self-interest. To the extent that women as well as men might be
motivated by both altruism and self-interest (as appears realistic to assume), but in
degrees that cannot be specified a priori, it would be difficult to predict outcomes (see,
also, England 1989). The implications of intrahousehold coalitions in determining
bargaining power could, however, be examined empirically.

3. BEYOND THE HOUSEHOLD: THE MARKET,

THE COMMUNITY, AND THE STATE

We have noted at various points in the paper that women's bargaining power within
the home is clearly associated with their situation outside it. Although, as mentioned
earlier, some discussions of household bargaining recognize that "extrahousehold
environmental parameters" (McElroy 1990) impinge on intrahousehold bargaining power,
we need to go beyond mere recognition to examine how such parameters can themselves
be bargained over.50

49
In many African societies, the mother-child unit has a "relative autonomy and separate identity"
(Guyer and Peters 1987, 207). In India, Ross' (1961) grading of emotional closeness in 11 types of
relationships among Hindu joint families in Bangalore City put the mother-son and brother-sister
relationships in the top two positions, and husband-wife as second to last. And Maher (1984, 115-116) notes
that in Moroccan villages, "women look on husbands and fathers as potential enemies and sons and brothers
as potential allies in the struggle they engage in to mitigate the power of the former over the conditions of their
existence."
50
Folbre (1997), in her discussion of "gender-specific environmental parameters," and Agarwal
(1994a) appear to be among the few who, in different ways, have engaged this question.
 44

Outside the household/family, gender interactions take place in several arenas, of

which three are especially important: the market, the community, and the State. The
bargaining approach can usefully be extended to characterize gender interactions in these
arenas as well.

THE MARKET

Unlike the theoretical ambiguity about motivation that surrounds characterizations

of gender relations within the household, market relations are unambiguously depicted in
economic analysis as guided by self-interest. In this arena, bargaining takes its most
explicit form and has been focused on widely, especially in the context of labor markets
and trade unions. Given the attention that market-related bargaining has already received,
it is not detailed here. What does need mention, however, is that women's ability to
bargain in the market, as in other arenas, is mediated by gendered norms and practices;
and that owning and controlling property (especially landed property, in agrarian
contexts) is important for strengthening women's bargaining power in the market as well.
Both aspects were mentioned earlier, but the former needs some elaboration.
Consider the labor market. Bargaining may occur over wages, the duration and
intensity of work, work conditions, and so on. But women's bargaining power in the
workplace (in comparison with men's) would be constrained not only by gender gaps in
skills, information, and education, but also by women's domestic responsibilities, which
reduce their job options; by employers' assumptions (which, as noted, may be quite
erroneous)51 regarding women's abilities, work commitment, efficiency, and needs; by her
own and her household's property status (and thus the reserve price of her labor); by
cultural specifications of appropriate female behavior (e.g., norms for female seclusion,
or the view that public haggling by women is improper); by barriers to women's entry into

51
See, for example, Barrett (1980) and Kumar (1989).
 45

trade unions and male biases within trade unions52; and so on. Many of these factors
would also adversely affect women's ability to function in markets for land and
agricultural inputs.
In other words, gender ideology (crystallized in social perceptions, norms, and
practices) and women's economic situation affect bargaining not just within the home
space but also the public space. For rural women, the village community, which also
often defines its work space locationally and socially, assumes particular importance in
the contestation over both gender norms and communal resources, as further discussed
below.

THE COMMUNITY

A community could be defined in terms of a shared identity based on location (e.g.,

a village) and/or social grouping (religious, racial, ethnic, caste, clan, and so on). A
person will generally be a member of several communities simultaneously; for instance,
of a caste or religious grouping within a village (or spread across several villages), as well
as of the larger village community containing several castes or religious groupings.
Like gender relations within the household, those within a community can also be
characterized as having relationships of cooperative conflict within a bargaining
framework of analysis, although with some important differences from the intrahousehold
context, as discussed later. Consider, first, the general case of an individual within the
community and then the issue of gender. It can be argued that an individual is likely to
cooperate with the community insofar as it brings her/him greater economic, social, or
political gain than possible otherwise. Community membership can provide individuals
with economic support (jobs, credit, help in a crisis), social support (for marriages,

52
On women's experience in trade unions, see, for example, Beechey (1987) for the United Kingdom,
Folbre (1994) for the United States, and Hensman (1988) for India.
 46

illnesses, deaths, etc.), and political support (say, in conflicts with other communities),
which are denied to nonmembers. Hence, each individual may be better off economically
and socially as a part of the community than outside it. Further, community members can
cooperate in specific contexts for mutual benefit, such as by jointly managing a
communal resource, like the village commons.
What would cooperation with an individual on the part of the community mean? It
could be argued that the community would want to retain the loyalty of its members who,
in aggregate, constitute the human and material resources of the community and its
political strength. It could therefore seek to retain its individual members by promoting
support networks, formulating and enforcing consensual rules, and so on.
At the same time, there can be at least three types of inherent conflict between an
individual and the community: one, over the sharing of economic resources held in
common (such as common land or a water source); two, over positions of political power
and decisionmaking authority; and three, over community norms that dictate social
behavior.
Implicit or explicit bargaining can occur between an individual and the community
over the rules governing economic resource use, political positions, and social behavior,
and over the enforcement of those rules. The cooperation of an individual with the
community could imply her/his following the established rules, or bargaining to change
 47

the rules by discussion, protest, etc.53 Noncooperation would mean withdrawing from
particular community activities, or opting out of the community altogether.54
A person could opt out of a local community altogether in a variety of ways with
varying implications. S/he may physically relocate permanently (e.g., migrate) for
economic reasons, or for gaining greater social freedom. More drastic would be opting
out of a community by changing one's social identity—for instance, changing one's
religion or caste. A person leaving one community may hope to assimilate into another,
but this is not always easy. In practice, opting out would not be an option available to all,
and for many it may be their last resort.
In some ways, the nature of inherent cooperative conflicts between an individual
and a community is not dissimilar to that between household members. But there are at
least two critical differences. One, since the community's size is larger than of a
household, the costs to the community of an individual member not cooperating would
typically be small or insignificant (unless the person commands substantial economic or
political influence by virtue of his/her property status or political contacts within or
outside the village). Two, unlike the household, the community would not necessarily be
a unit of joint consumption, production, or investment, although some or all members
may cooperate in specific contexts, say by investing in and using a communal resource

53
Noncompliance with community rules could be seen as a form of implicit bargaining. But
sanctions for some forms of noncompliance could be severe, even involving ostracization, in effect exclusion
from the community, as noted by Agarwal (1994a) in cases of women breaking sexual taboos in parts of India,
and by McKean (1992) in cases of people breaking rules governing the use of common property resources in
Tokugawa, Japan.
54
For some interesting parallels, see Hirschman (1970), which argues that individuals can express
dissatisfaction with an organization (a firm, a political party, etc.) in two ways: exit and voice. That is, the
person can opt out of the organization altogether, or give voice to dissatisfaction by protesting to the
authorities. Organizations that have a high price associated with the exit option—loss of life-long association,
defamation, deprivation of livelihood, and so on (as could also happen in relation to a community)—could
repress the use of the voice option as well: "Obviously, if exit is followed by severe sanctions, the very idea
of exit is going to be repressed and the threat will not be uttered for fear that the sanction will apply to the
threat as well as to the act itself" (pp. 96-97).
In my formulation, voice would constitute a form of bargaining; and the effectiveness of a person's
voice, as well as her/his ability to pay the price of exit, would depend especially on her/his fallback position.
 48

such as land or water.55 Explicit expressions of cooperation or conflict between an

individual and a community may also be more episodic than every day in nature.
How does gender impinge on this formulation? For illustration, consider an Indian
woman belonging to a village community that is more or less homogenous in terms of
caste and class. She could benefit from caste support in numerous ways, such as
receiving loans or other economic and social help during crises, being able to enter into
labor-sharing arrangements with other members for domestic or agricultural tasks,
receiving help in arranging children's marriages, being allowed access to a well or to a
piece of common land possessed by the caste group, and so on. At the same time, there
could be underlying conflict over her share of communal resources, or over caste rules
about whom she may marry, or over social norms regarding the degree of seclusion she
must maintain, and so on. The last (as noted) would restrict her earning options and be a
particular source of conflict in poverty contexts.
However, the ability of an Indian village woman to "bargain" with the community
for a greater share in communal resources, or for greater social freedom (a change in
social norms), would be more limited than that of a man, for several reasons. One,
women are often excluded from (or severely underrepresented in) public decisionmaking
bodies that enforce and modify the rules governing the community. Two, a woman's
typically weaker intrahousehold bargaining power would also weaken her extrahousehold
bargaining power (compared with men), if her husband and marital family oppose her
stand. Three, where patrilocal, intervillage marriages with nonkin are the norm, married
women would not have the support of kin coalitions that men have within the village.

55
There is a growing theoretical and empirical literature on whether, and under what circumstances,
individuals would cooperate as a group for economic gain from a common pool resource. See, especially,
Baland and Platteau (1993), Ostrom (1990), and Wade (1988); and on some gender aspects, see Agarwal
(1997).
 49

In general, women's bargaining power within the community would be enhanced if

they operate as a group than as individuals.56 For instance, an individual woman who
breaks seclusion norms can easily be penalized by her caste group, say by casting
aspersions on her character or shunning her. Such reprisals are less possible if a group of
women decide to transgress the rules (as BRAC women did in challenging purdah
norms). Similarly, it would be much more difficult for a woman acting alone to gain
control over common land, or to have a voice in public bodies, or to protest sexual
harassment or assault, than if she were part of a gender-progressive group or was
supported by such a group. In other words, within a socially homogenous community, a
woman's bargaining power with the community would stem only partly from her
individual economic and political position, and more particularly from gender-
progressive coalitions within the community.57
In a multi-caste, class-heterogeneous village, there would be at least one important
difference compared with a relatively homogeneous village: the bargaining power of
women would be affected not only by whether they belonged to a group and of what size,
but also by their caste and class positions within the village. In the sharing of communal
resources, for instance, the negotiating strength of low-caste or poor peasant women, even
if they formed a group, is likely to be weaker than that of high-caste or rich peasant
women whose caste or class as a whole commands greater power in the village.
Noncooperation in the sense of opting out of the local community altogether may
be even less of an option for village women than men; much would depend on the
woman's fallback position defined by her ability to survive, economically and socially,
outside the local community. Among factors that could impinge on this are the
following:

56
Elsewhere (Agarwal 1994a, 1994b), I distinguish between four forms of resistance to the social order:
individual-covert, individual-overt, group-covert, and group-overt. My argument is that group-overt resistance
would usually be the most effective.
57
For elaboration and illustrative examples, see Agarwal (1994a).
 50

• her personal property position and overall economic status: women owning,
say, landed property would be less dependent on the community for
economic survival than those without. Also, personal property positions
could be translated into political strengths outside the village community.
• her skills (including education), information access, and associated economic
opportunities independent of the community.
• the economic and social support provided by her household/family.
• material and social support from outside the community and family, such as
from women's groups, other NGOs, and the State. This could include
earning opportunities, housing, legal support, and (say, from women's
groups) emotional (confidence-building) and social support.

In other words, here a woman's fallback position could depend on her direct rights
in property, her access to extra-community economic opportunities and social support,
and her intrahousehold bargaining strength. The interhousehold political dynamics in the
village would impinge on this as well.

THE STATE

The framework of cooperative-conflict and bargaining is also relevant in

characterizing women's relationship with the State (although, again, not in the same way
as for intrahousehold relations). Consider the relationship of gender-progressive women's
organizations to the State. The demands of such organizations (and of many other NGOs)
are typically directed both at the State and against it. The State has the power to enact
laws and formulate policies and programs in women's favor; to increase women's access
to productive resources, employment, information, education, and health; to provide
protection from gender violence; to influence discourse on gender relations in the media
and educational institutions; and so on. All these are potential areas of cooperation
between the State and gender-progressive groups. However, the same State can also use
 51

its resources and coercive apparatus to reinforce existing gender-retrogressive biases

within the family and community, constituting a situation of conflict.
It could, of course, be asked: what would be the State's interest in cooperating with
gender-progressive groups and responding sympathetically to their demands? Several
interlinked factors impinge on this. One, such a group could build up political pressure,
perhaps with the support of oppositional political parties and/or the media, with
implications for voting patterns. Two, there could be implicit or explicit pressure from
international public opinion and international aid agencies (White 1992). Three, the State
might recognize the inefficacy both of market mechanisms and of its own machinery in
implementing programs that it sees as essential for development, such as programs for
literacy, health improvement, and poverty alleviation. In India, the State's attempts since
the mid-1980s to enlist NGO support (and especially the support of women's groups) for
literacy and health programs reflect this recognition. In other words, on several issues,
the interests of the State and of gender-progressive groups could coincide. Cooperation
by individuals or groups with the State could take the form of supporting it politically
(say, via votes), providing it legitimacy in international and national fora, desisting from
"disruptive" activities such as demonstrations, pickets, and strikes, and so on.
At the same time, the State may only cooperate with NGOs over certain types of
programs, such as welfare-oriented programs for the better delivery of health and
educational services or for providing income-earning opportunities to the poor. State
support (in nonsocialist regimes) is less likely for programs that call for a major
redistribution of economic resources, such as land, insofar as such programs could
adversely affect the interests of the State's main political constituencies. In other words,
within the framework of cooperative-conflict, there can be some issues over which the
State would be willing to cooperate and others over which there would be explicit
conflict.
Further, the State itself can be seen as an arena of cooperation and conflict that take
place at multiple levels. For instance, the State may gain consensus for passing gender-
 52

progressive laws and policies, but face resistance from the local bureaucracy, judiciary,
police, or other arms of the State apparatus in the implementation of these measures.
Again, some departments or ministries within the State apparatus may pursue gender-
progressive policies within an overall gender-retrogressive State structure and
development framework. Women's bureaus or ministries set up in many countries after
1975 (the beginning of the United Nations Decade for Women) are cases in point.
Likewise, there may be gender-progressive individuals within particular State
departments: in every South Asian country, it is possible to name individual bureaucrats
(male and female) who have played crucial positive roles in this respect, typically, but not
only, in response to demands by women's groups.58
On the one hand, therefore, there would be gender-related negotiation between
elements of the State and non-State organizations, institutions, or individuals; on the
other hand, the State itself is an arena of contestation between parties with varying
understandings of and commitment to reducing (or maintaining) gender hierarchies.
These contestations can be between State officials within a department, between different
tiers of the State apparatus (such as policymaking and policy implementing bodies),
and/or between different regional elements of the State structure.
Such a conceptualization implies that the State is not being seen here as a
monolithic structure that is inherently, uniformly, or transhistorically "patriarchal," as
argued by some (e.g., MacKinnon 1989). Rather, it is a differentiated structure through
which and within which gender relations get constituted, through a process of

58
See also, Sanyal (1991, 23), who found, in his meetings with a number of bureaucrats and State
planners in South Asia, that many were "intensely critical of inefficiencies within the government, and were
often very appreciative of ... NGOs who had organized the poor, made demands on the government on their
behalf, and thus, had facilitated social reform." NGOs, likewise, while complaining about obstructive social
officials, also mentioned "good bureaucrats" who helped them even against the recommendations of fellow
bureaucrats.
Goetz (1990) found interesting differences in the attitudes of male and female field-level bureaucrats
in Bangladesh. In village-level credit programs, for instance, women bureaucrats were much more sympathetic
to the constraints faced by village women and were less susceptible than their male colleagues to being coopted
by the local male elite.
 53

contestation and bargaining.59 Such a conceptualization does not deny the empirical
realities of State-functioning in many countries as having been more gender-retrogressive
than gender-progressive. But it does mean that the State could be and has been in some
degree subject to challenge and change in this respect.
In this process of contestation, women's bargaining strength with the State could
depend on a complex set of factors, such as whether they are functioning as individuals or
as a group (their strength would be far greater as a group, as with community-level
bargaining); the group's size (their bargaining power would be greater the larger the
group); and their ability to muster support from the media, oppositional parties, and from
individuals and groups within the State apparatus. The degree to which the State is
democratic and whether institutions within the country, such as the judiciary, can act
autonomously of the ruling political party, would also impinge on the outcomes of
women's interactions with the State, as would the extent of sensitivity to gender-related
concerns prevailing within the country and internationally.

INTERACTIONS: THE HOUSEHOLD, THE MARKET,

THE COMMUNITY, AND THE STATE

The household/family, the market, the community, and the State, as noted, can be
characterized as four principal arenas of contestation. Gender relations get constituted
and contested within each.
Each arena simultaneously impinges on a woman's bargaining power. For instance,
consider the flow diagram (Figure 1) giving the factors discussed earlier as likely to affect
women's intra-family bargaining power in relation to subsistence. Some of these factors
(e.g., women's property status, support from gender-progressive groups, and social norms
and perceptions) would also affect a woman's bargaining power within the community,

59
Here, I come close to Connell's (1987, 130) conceptualization of the State in the context of Western
democracies.
 54

the market, and the State, and through these, affect her intrahousehold bargaining power
indirectly as well.
In addition, the four arenas may be seen as interactive, each with the others,
embodying pulls and pressures that may, at specific junctures, either converge
(reinforcing each other) or move in contradictory directions (providing spaces for
countervailing resistances). For instance, a State may pass laws, define policies, and
promote programs that favor women's interests, while some communities within the
country may resist the implementation of these measures: the situation in parts of South
55
 56

Asia, at several points in time, could be so characterized. Or the State, the community,
and the family may reinforce each other in strengthening, say, the strictures on women's
social and sexual conduct, as has happened under many Islamic regimes. Or State
policies may be congruent with the dominant interests of the community, but individual
families may find that their economic and market-linked interests are in conflict with the
norms set by local communities. Many poor rural households in Bangladesh today are
cases in point: here, a push toward Islamization by the State, and supported by local
communities, has dictated greater female seclusion, but such strictures (as noted) are now
being contested by many poor women (often with the tacit support of their husbands),
who find that these norms seriously limit the family's livelihood options.
Essentially, the local communities can be seen as playing an intermediate role
between the State and the individual or the household in defining and enforcing people's
social obligations and social practices, including those concerning appropriate forms of
behavior and communal economic activity. At the same time, not all members of a
community need conform to what is specified by the community's influential members.
To the extent that the State as a whole (or significant elements within it) maintains a
relatively gender-progressive position in policies, legislation and implementation, it
provides space for individual women or individual households to exit from or openly
contest a community's gender-retrogressive stranglehold. It also provides space for
women to build organized resistance against gender-retrogressive practices prevailing in
the community and/or household.
It is notable that gender-progressive coalitions and associated collective action can
prove important determinants of women's fallback position and bargaining power in all
four arenas, as outlined at various points in the paper. Indeed, women in groups speak "in
a different voice." As a woman from BRAC put it:

The most important thing I learned from the Samity [organization] is that we
are strong as a group. We can withstand pressure but alone we are nothing.
 57

A house cannot stand on one post. Put a post in each corner and it is strong!
With the Samity behind me, people think twice before harming me (Hunt
1983, 38).

4. IN CONCLUSION

The first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. This is ok as

far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can't be measured...
This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what can't
be measured easily is not very important. This is blindness. The fourth step
is to say that what can't be easily measured really doesn't exist. This is
suicide ('Adam Smith' 1972, 290).

This paper has focused on some of the features of intra- and extra-household
dynamics that have received inadequate or no attention in the formulation of household
models or in discussions of the bargaining framework and gender relations, and that can
critically affect the outcomes of those dynamics. Ignoring these features may not be
suicidal for most economists, but it would certainly indicate blindness, and could most
certainly prove misleading.
In broad terms, these relatively neglected dimensions concern, especially, four
types of issues:

1. The complex determinants (especially qualitative ones) of bargaining power in

relation to specific resources, the differential importance of those determinants
(e.g., the particular significance of landed property in agrarian societies), and the
extent to which the determinants themselves are subject to contestation and
change—all this mediated through the lens of gender.
2. The short-term exogeneity but long-term endogeneity of social norms, and the
varied and crucial roles they play in setting limits to bargaining, in determining
 58

bargaining power for that which can be bargained over, and in influencing how
bargaining gets conducted.
3. The coexistence of both self-interest and altruism as motivators of individual
action.
4. The interrelated nature of bargaining within and outside the household, the
embeddedness of households within a wider institutional environment, and the role
of groups/coalitions as determinants of bargaining power.

Some of these aspects could be incorporated into formal models and empirically
tested with the gathering of appropriate data. For instance, it would be possible to take
better account of factors, in addition to say incomes, that affect bargaining power, and to
identify the more important determinants in specific contexts. The paper has suggested
some of the factors that are likely to affect gender differences in intrahousehold
bargaining power in relation to subsistence, and the special importance of command over
land in agrarian economies. These aspects could be tested empirically. The idea of
intrahousehold bargaining coalitions could also be examined empirically.
But some of the other aspects discussed relate to qualitative dimensions on which
systematic information is often difficult to gather, and/or which cannot readily be
integrated into formal models. One such issue is the role of social perceptions in the
valuation of people's contributions and needs, and the undervaluing of women's
contributions and needs. Perceptions are difficult to incorporate in formal specifications
or to quantify. Another issue is the complexity of social norms, on some of which
systematic data could be obtained (e.g., marriage practices), but others would prove more
elusive. Equally complex would be a formal specification of bargaining over social
norms. A third issue is that both self-interest and altruism are likely to motivate people's
actions, but we cannot determine a priori which (or what mix) would prevail in what
context, and how gender, age, or identities based on class, race, religion, nation, etc.,
would affect the motivations. In these circumstances, it would be difficult to predict the
 59

outcomes of bargaining, or assign values to various parameters. And a fourth issue is that
households operate within a larger institutional setting (of community, market, State,
etc.); hence, predictions based solely on household-level bargaining models could prove
inaccurate. At the same time, formal incorporation of these institutional features may be
confounded by complexity and lack of information. The difficulty of including them in
formal specifications and testing, however, should not preclude recognition of the
importance of these factors; and, here, accompanying analytical descriptions would be
illuminating.
In fact, the issue of collective bargaining and collective action, when extended
beyond the recognized space of the market, and covering negotiations not just over
economic resources but also over social norms and cultural constructions of gender,
opens up a whole new area of analytical work. While this cannot be examined here, it
clearly has important implications for future extensions of theory and policy. Therein lies
a challenge.
 60

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