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Balancing work and home life is a crucial decision all working couples must make. But we all know women do most of the heavy lifting at home – and this is not because they prefer it or are biologically “more suitable to care” (yes, many people still believe that).
Having limited resources to fall back upon means a woman has little ground to stand on when bargaining with her husband to do less work in the home, or for her husband to be more involved in childcare, and/or to compromise on his career for hers (the opposite is the norm).
So while it might seem that we can ‘solve inequality’ by getting women to access these resources, studies digging deeper into the way in which various resources translate into power for a woman have often found counter-intuitive results.
Here are at least 5 important resources women need and the battles they must fight to access the job market:
Having a job is a good way for women, especially married women, to increase their say in household decision-making.
However, the jobs they are able to get are far from ideal – and often gendered (e.g. jobs requiring ‘nimble fingers’), or are constrained by distance and access.
Not only does this belief mean many women never have the opportunity to have careers, but it also means young men are often unduly burdened with the task of financially supporting their entire families.
Earning more can reduce workload at home, but maybe not if you earn more than your husband.
For working women, how much they earn – specifically in comparison to their husbands, can influence their bargaining power. Intuitively we would think that the more a woman earns the more she can do what she wants. However, a study found that it is a bit more complex than that as the findings corroborate with said intuition only till a point.
The old adage most Indian women have probably heard – of never marrying men who earn less than them – sadly finds some verification.
Another form of financial backing that can help a woman increase her bargaining power is having an inheritance. However, as India has historically been a patrilineal society where such resources have been directed to the male household head (with few exceptions such as the Khasi community in the North East), very few women are likely to have this resource at their disposal.
More education definitely helps, but marriage market misogyny often comes in the way. Women who are more than – or equally educated compared to their husbands – are more likely to be able bargain their way to a job.
While this seems positive, sometimes more educated women are seen as being more useful in the home as they would be able to manage household responsibilities, and possibly educate their children better.
Further, the crude marriage market in India may see dowry prices fall as a woman’s education level increases as long as it’s lower than the husband’s (though this is up to a certain level because the older you get, the higher the dowry price).
The assumption here, of course, is that with or without education a woman’s role lies in the home.
On a slightly different note, a huge determinant of bargaining power is confidence, as is the case in any social transaction.
Many women might never go against the grain, possible because they do not consider themselves to be disadvantaged, when all they’ve ever seen is women who live in similar subservience.
This could be particularly understood in the sphere of employment – in terms of discrimination, the risk of assault, or micro-aggressions.
Women must traverse through life receiving smaller shares of resources compared to men around them, and these disadvantages (severely compounded by caste, class, and geography, etc.) make it difficult for women to access various resources that can help her bargain.
(Karan Singhal (@karansinghal93) works on education policy and urban local governance in Ahmedabad. Nisha Vernekar is a graduate development economics student at SOAS, University of London. They work together on an initiative- Pune Collab -trying to build an NGO database for organisations and individuals in Pune.)
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