Gender and trade within the household: Observations from rural guatemala

A household model proposed by Carter and Katz (1992) assumes that resource exchanges and the division of expenditure responsibilities among household members are directly observable, and important to their individual and collective responses to new opportunities and constraints. This paper illustrates that it is possible to observe the complex processes that characterize the domestic economy by examining several examples of intrahousehold resource transfers and expenditure flows among a sample of rural households in the Central Highlands of Guatemala. It is found that women transfer significant labor time to a new male income-generating activity, with the greatest single source of variation in the value of this intrahousehold resource transfer being the availability of older daughters to perform the domestic labor that is normally the responsibility of the female head. It is also shown that the transfer of female land to her husband is in some cases compensated for, or reciprocated, by the transfer of tradeable goods at the end of the agricultural season. With regard to women's remunerated labor activities, older daughters enable their mothers to pursue these either by relieving them of some of their domestic responsibilities and/or by directly contributing their labor to their mother's income-generating endeavors. Nonfood expenditures are analyzed in light of the relative responsibilities of men and women in decision making, finance and purchase. It is found that increased male agricultural income is largely spent on male goods, affecting women 's ability to purchase food and domestic technology. The paper concludes by arguing that the results obtained from direct observation of intrahousehold transfers are useful for the prediction and interpretation of microlevel policy impacts not obtainable from aggregate household information.