On Norms and Agency: Conversations about Gender Equality with Women and Men in 20 Countries by Ana María Muñoz Boudet; Patti Petesch; Carolyn Turk; Angélica Thumala

Author:Ana María Muñoz Boudet; Patti Petesch; Carolyn Turk; Angélica Thumala
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The World Bank

“First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage, Then Comes Baby in a Baby Carriage”

From early in life, we face constant reminders of the relations expected between women and men. Even playground games and songs—such as the title of this section,12 which is a song used by children to taunt boys and girls seen as getting too close or too romantic with each other—charge our lives with gender signification. Thorne (1993) refers to this process as gender play and children, as well as adults, recreate gender in everything they do, such as creating a couple when they see a boy and girl together. For most children, when they grow up, this becomes a reality. Starting a new household and having children are the most visible and significant life decisions, and are both the norm and the aspiration of most girls and boys.

This section discusses how norms and prevailing practices around marriage and childbearing are bending, although they are infrequently challenged. As women’s empowerment grows, they gain more control over their bodies and fertility choices, such as contraceptive use, family size, spacing between births, and the sex composition of their children (Jejeebhoy 1995b; Malhotra, Schuler, and Boender 2002). In turn, these new reproductive behaviors and changes in family formation influence women’s major life decisions.

The position of women in the household is central to their ability, or lack of it, to exercise their agency, and this position varies with age, the bearing of children, economic participation, and more. Marriage and reproduction have a different effect on men’s lives and agency. For many men, family formation moves them from a subordinated position—as sons under the authority of an older male—to the position of power in their own households. But with that power come responsibilities, such as the economic support of the new family and the pressures to comply with associated norms.

One of the messages that emerged from the discussions with young adult women and men in the study is a desire to delay starting a family until they have greater control over their lives. They consider having an education and a job with a steady income, as well as physical and psychological maturity, to be preconditions for a secure adult family life. These yearnings for control, however, constantly interact with social norms and expected behaviors about how and when family formation should begin. Different views on the appropriate age for marriage may have an impact on the accumulation of endowments (e.g., education) and the capacity to take advantage of economic opportunities.

Marriage may free young women from their father’s control, but it often is simply a transition into different situations of disadvantage with another male (their husband) and of decreased agency as a junior female among the women in the husband’s extended family (Kabeer 2001). Arranged marriages are still customary in some of the study communities, as are financial payments, such as a bride price (lobola in southern Africa) or a dowry. In other sample communities, women have to yield to strong pressure from husbands and in-laws over the number of children they bear.

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