The Economics of the Household

The common assumption is that the male head of household is the prime provider. This assumption, however, ignores the reality documented by scientific studies. The reality is that in many of the poorest world regions women, not men, are the primary providers for the nutrition, health, and other vital aspects of life of their families.

In many households women are actually the sole providers. In most African nations, for example, women do the subsistence farming that keeps their families alive. They are either single mothers or their husbands have left for urban areas where they often take another wife.

Over the last decades, there have also been many studies of how economic resources are used in two-parent households. These studies shed further light on how dominator assumptions and policies impede both human and economic development.

As Judith Bruce and Daisy Dwyer write in their book A Home Divided, it is quite common that cultural tradition supports the notion that men have a right to personal spending money, which they are perceived to need or deserve, and that women's income is for collective purposes. Consequently, as Cynthia B. Lloyd and Bruce report, “there is considerable empirical evidence across diverse cultures and income groups that women have a higher propensity than men to spend on goods that benefit children and enhance their capacities.”

How much higher this propensity can be is shown by Duncan Thomas in his report “Intra-Household Resource Allocation.” He found that “in Brazil, $1 in the hands of a Brazilian woman has the same effect on child survival as $18 in the hands of a man.” Similarly, Bruce and Lloyd found that in Guatemala “an additional $11.40 per month in a mother’s hands would achieve the same weight gain in a young child as an additional $166 if earned by the father.

Of course, there are men who give primary importance to meeting their families' needs even in rigidly male-dominated cultures. Typically, however, men in these societies are socialized to believe it’s their prerogative to use their wages for non-family purposes, including drinking, smoking, and gambling, and that when women complain, they are nagging and controlling. As Dr. Anugerah Pekerti, Chair of World Vision, Indonesia, notes, many fathers seem to have no problem putting their own immediate desires above the survival needs of their children.

Yet traditional economic theories, whether capitalist or socialist, are based on the assumption that the male head of household will expend the resources he controls for the benefit of all family members. This has been the assumption in conventional analyses, which treat the household as a unit, and is one of the assumptions behind the fact that the bulk of aid to people in the developing world has been given to men.

Development aid programs still allocate enormous funds to large-scale projects in which women have little or no say – and from which poor women and children derive few if any benefits. Even the recent micro-lending or “village loan” programs that largely target women only provide minimal amounts. The bulk of bank loans go to businesses owned by male elites or to male “heads of household.”

Much of the humanitarian government aid from developed to developing nations winds up in the hands of elites who deposit it in Swiss banks, build mansions, and otherwise line their pockets with it. Even when funds go directly to the poor, these too often end up in the pockets of men who use them for themselves rather than their families. The effect of this on the general quality of life is not hard to see.

Again, I want to emphasize that what I’m reporting is not intended to blame men for our world’s economic ills. We’re dealing with a system in which both women and men are socialized to accept the notion that one half of our species is put on earth to be served and the other half to serve, and that mothers, but not fathers, must subordinate their needs and desires to those of their families.

This economic double standard flows from the male-superior, female-inferior view of humanity we inherited from more rigidly dominator-oriented cultures. It not only hurts women, but is a template for equating all difference – be it of race, religion, or ethnicity – with superiority and inferiority, with serving and being served, with dominating or being dominated.

In the domination system, there is no partnership alternative. There are only two perceived choices: you dominate or you’re dominated. This has clearly had disastrous effects on human relations. It has also led to an inefficient economic system.

Excerpted from The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economy by Riane Eisler