Transcript Cooperation and conflict within couples: The gendered distribution of entitlement to household income GeNet Conference, Cambridge 26-27 March 2009 Jérôme De Henau and Susan Himmelweit.

Cooperation and conflict within
couples:
The gendered distribution of
entitlement to household income
GeNet Conference, Cambridge
26-27 March 2009
Jérôme De Henau and Susan Himmelweit
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Motivation
• Entitlements: legitimate command over resources that
give rise to opportunities (Sen)
• Indicator of autonomy (current or future)
• Cooperative-conflict model:
– mutual interest in cooperation to increase household resources
– but still can be conflict of interest about division of resources
• Our aim;
 Capture gendered effects
 Identify determinants of entitlements
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Change in male and female answers to
satisfaction with household income
Change in
male satis.
Change in
female satis.
Male
remains in non full-time/non work
non full-time to full-time job
remains in full-time job
full-time job to non full-time
-0.07
0.62
0.00
-0.60
0.00
0.47
0.00
-0.52
Female
remains in non full-time/non work
non full-time to full-time job
remains in full-time job
full-time job to non full-time
0.00
0.27
-0.02
-0.10
0.04
0.34
-0.04
-0.25
no child <0-4y
from no child to child <0-4
keep child <0-4
from child <0-4 to older child
0.01
-0.18
0.01
-0.07
0.01
-0.32
0.03
0.06
Man loses his job 
both dissatisfied (woman
less so than man)
Woman loses her job 
both dissatisfied too, but
less so (man much less
so than woman)
Young child  woman
more dissatisfied than
man
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Why such gender differences?
• Different personality traits and attitudes to change
• Different valuation of money (trade-off with other
domains such as leisure, social life)
• Different entitlements, access to underlying resources
and burden of costs because of different
– Perceived contributions (what each member brings into the
household and how it is valued)
– Perceived fall-back positions in case cooperation breaks down
– Perceptions of interest (e.g. individualistic versus family-based)
• All these aspects can be gendered (influence of gender
norms)
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Our model
• Among other factors, satisfaction is influenced by
entitlements
– Household entitlements (interest in cooperation)
– Relative entitlements (where interests conflict)
• Entitlements (both elements) are influenced by
– Variables that affect current and future resources
– Individual variables can have different impact according to
gender
• Our aim: disentangling gendered and non-gendered
determinants of household and relative entitlements
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Method
• Use BHPS data
– Panel data enables us to strip out effects of unobserved timeinvariant factors (such as personality traits)
– Linear fixed effects
– Pooled ordered benchmark for comparison
• Two dependent variables
– average of scores of satisfaction:
• impact in same direction interpreted as impact on household
entitlements
– difference in scores of satisfaction:
• impact in different direction interpreted as impact on relative
entitlements
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Method
• Control for overall satisfaction with life (to focus on
financial aspects of entitlements and avoid trade-offs
between different domains)
• Examples of explanatory variables are income level,
income source, employment status, earning share,
potential wage, housework time and presence of young
children
• Some of these variables are household level, some
individual
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Gendered pattern
• Individual factors that affect entitlements may do so in
symmetric and gendered ways for both cooperation and
conflict
• Cooperation can be achieved by partners adopting roles
that are partially symmetric and partially gendered:
– e.g. valuing both partners’ employment but putting more weight
on the man's than the woman’s
• Similarly for the conflictual element
– e.g. if being the higher earner gives either greater entitlement
but has more effect for one sex than the other
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Cooperative aspects of
entitlements
Variables that affect this:
• Household level:
– Household income (+), investment income (+), House ownership
(+), Children aged 0-4 (-)
• Individual level (symmetric):
– human capital (+), full-time employment (+), poor health (-),
housework hours (-)
• Individual level (gendered):
– woman higher earner (+), man unemployed (-), man long-term
disabled ()
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Conflictual aspects of
entitlements
• Household level:
– Household receives transfer income (woman +/man -)
– Children aged 0-4 (woman -/man +)
• Individual level (symmetric):
– Full-time employment (+); Unemployment and disability (-) poor
health (-); Hours of housework (-)
• Individual level (gendered):
– Higher earner (+ for woman)
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Reflections
• Not only division of current resources matters
– future autonomy/security is also reflected in partners’
assessment of their current situation
• Conflictual aspects a challenge to income pooling and
unitary models
• Perceptions matter  need to explore gender norms
• Both direct and indirect gender effects need exploration:
– direct: some variables have directly gendered effects
– Indirect: distribution of variables that matter (employment,
earnings, caring responsibilities, etc.) is gendered
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Conclusion
• Households both create and reinforce gender inequalities
• This is true of cooperative as well as conflictual aspects:
– doing what is best for joint interests may influence relative entitlements
eg more weight on male employment
– “togetherness” may undermine “autonomy”
• Model that can be applied to:
– other countries and with additional explanatory factors (e.g. external
factors and gender norms)
– extended to other domains of entitlement (such as time and social life)
• Refine model by accounting for interdependence and relational
aspects of care in Sen’s model
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