What happens in households?

The possibility of applying a gender approach to analysis of the intra-household resource and capital allocation processes

Abstract

This paper aims to present a literature review of attempts to include gender analysis in research on intra-household relations and inequalities. The starting point for the article is the critique offered by feminist economics towards household economics and the Beckerian new household economics, which were the first to draw attention to the importance of gender relations between household members and the institutions that mediate the social norms influencing intra-household processes. The paper then presents various sub-models of intra-household economics that focus on intra-household relations and provides a detailed description of attempts to capture gender relations within the household. One of the main lessons that can be drawn from the review is that intra-household gender inequality is a complex concept. Therefore, the proxies used by different models to capture the phenomenon are crucial, as the output and conclusions about gender relations as seen by the model may differ accordingly. Furthermore, contextualization of the proxies is also critical because the same proxy may have different meanings depending on the status of the household, and the use of mixed methodologies is more likely to explore this. A growing body of research aims at exploring the interactive relationship between gender relations within the household and the household's social, institutional, and normative context, and highlights how different public policies and welfare institutions affect the agency of household members of different genders and the consequences for their well-being and life chances.