resources and decision making

briefly explain resources and decision making?

Family resources are often shared unequally between men and women – normally the result of who controls family income and has power to make decisions

what have researchers suggested this leads to?

• Men gain more from women’s domestic work than they give back in financial support

• Financial support given to wives by husbands is often unpredictable and has ‘strings attached’ (i.e. conditions they need to meet when spending money)

who talks about money management?

what do they identify?

• Pahl and Vogler

• two types of money management

what are these two types?

• pooling

• allowance

what’s pooling?

partners put money together and have joint access/responsibility

what’s allowance?

husband gives wife a budget to meet needs of family and retains surplus for themselves

what’s the most common money management system?

pooling

however, what do Pahl and Vogler say about it?

• Usually associate pooling with equality in resource control/decision making

• Even when pooling, men usually still make major financial decisions though

explain Decision Making?

Observations have shown that women’s lives are often structured around their husbands career

who talks about decision making?

Edgell

what did Edgell find?

• Very important decisions (e.g. job changes, moving house) - decided by husband

  b) Important decisions (e.g. children’s education) - decided jointly with men having last say

  c) Less important decisions (e.g. what to have for tea) - made by wife

why might this be?

• Women may have less say in decisions as they usually earn less

• Some evidence of movement towards more equality in financial decision making – women who earned more money and were well-qualified more likely to have equal say

what is this called?

material explanations for decision making

what do feminists say about material explanations?

• Inequalities in decision making are also due to cultural definitions of men as decision makers – this is taught to us by socialisation (supports cultural explanation)

what does Pahl say about the meaning of money?

Pooling does not necessarily mean equality, we need to know:

a) Who controls the pooled money

b) Who contributes what – is it a fair proportion of their earnings

what is the PLP view on money?

Money does not have a fixed, automatic meaning – couples have different views on what money means to them

do they say we should work from the bottom up or top down approach?

bottom-up and ask couples what it means to them – we cannot assume money = power for all couples

why are same-sex couples have different views of money?

Same-sex couples often do not see control of money as a marker of power but more of a chore as there is no historical, gendered ideas which suggest money is a source of power