Gender Coalitions: Extrafamily Influences in Intrafamily Inequality
Author(s)
Folbre, Nancy
Abstract
Economic analysis has shifted in recent years from treatment of the household as an undifferentiated unit with a single decision-making head, to models which incorporate power, inequality, and bargaining processes between members. However, there has been remarkably little discussion of why certain policies have been biased not only against women but against equality in the household. Laws, customs and other institutions of the larger society can support varying degrees of equality in relationships between men and women within the family. These extrafamily institutions are beyond the reach of economic analysis as it is currently conducted. The author recommends an interdisciplinary approach to better comprehend the dimensions of intrafamily allocation. She here argues that collective action to influence public policy and social norms can play an important part in altering the environment within which family-based decision processes occur. The focus is on the family rather than the household because legal and cultural rules bind families. In turn, family bonds have economic consequences beyond the situation of shared living quarters (e.g. non-custodial parents providing child support, or adult children contributing to the care of elderly parents).
