Despite substantial economic liberalization since the early 1990s, nontraditional exports in Zambia have grown only moderately and agricultural performance overall has been disappointing. Though agriculture accounts for less than 20 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), it is the most important source of employment, especially for women. Interpretations of Zambia’s poor performance variously emphasize external factors, such as declining copper prices and vulnerability to weather shocks, and market imperfections.

The early work on intrahousehold allocation alerted researchers and policymakers to the possible policy failures that could arise from neglect of intrahousehold allocation issues (Haddad, Hoddinott, and Alderman 1997). Conversely, what are the policy gains from paying attention to these issues? The new research on intrahousehold issues provides evidence that policies and interventions can be made more effective when differential rights, resources, and responsibilities within the household are explicitly considered.

Policymakers have many options for improving women’s status relative to men’s. The most appropriate set of actions in a given situation will naturally be specific to that context. This chapter outlines some policy actions that have proven successful, as summarized in Table 26.1, and gives some examples of their implementation.

Among financial institutions serving poor households around the world, microfinance programs have emerged as important players. These programs typically make small loans—sometimes as small as US$50 to US$100 and sometimes as large as several thousand dollars-to households lacking access to formal-sector banks (see, for example, Lapenu and Zeller 2001). One important achievement of the microfinance movement has been its relative success in deliberately reaching out to poor women living in diverse socioeconomic environments.

The previous sections have highlighted the importance of assets as a determinant of bargaining power within marriage. Both formal and informal institutions underlie asset accumulation and provide the basis for property rights. When women face social and legal restrictions in acquiring certain forms of assets, such as land, they may resort to accumulating other “assets” and investing in other forms of capital.

Pervasive poverty and undernutrition persist in Bangladesh. About half the country’s 130 million people cannot afford an adequate diet. Poverty has kept generations of families from sending their children to school, and without education their children’s future will be a distressing echo of their own. Furthermore, from birth, children from poor families are often deprived of the basic nutritional building blocks that they need to learn easily. Consequently, the pathway out of poverty is restricted for children from poor families.

It is a well-known fact that households in developing countries often undergo weather-related and other shocks that drastically affect incomes. A large and growing literature explores the effectiveness of response to these events. One strand of the literature addresses the strategies that households and governments use to protect against income shocks (Udry 1990; Fafchamps, Udry, and Czukas 1998; Kochar 1999). A second strand looks at the effectiveness of these strategies in reducing fluctuations in consumption.

Micronutrient malnutrition is a serious problem in developing countries. It is well established that micronutrient requirements are greater for women and children because of their special needs for reproduction and growth. Unfortunately, however, women and children suffer most from micronutrient deficiencies. Micronutrient deficiency impairs the cognitive development of young children, retards physical growth, increases child mortality, and contributes to the problem of maternal death during childbirth.

Traditional models of household economic behavior have portrayed households as unified entities. They assume that household members agree about decisions and share resources in the most equitable way possible. More recently, however, economists have come to view households as domains of difference, where multiple decisionmakers may have different preferences and, in many cases, control separate sets of resources. This new approach has greatly improved understanding of household resource allocation behavior.

This chapter challenges one of the main tenets of agricultural economics—that households behave as though they are single individuals, with production factors allocated efficiently between men and women. In many contexts this is a convenient and innocuous assumption. It can be quite restrictive, however, when investigating the causes and welfare consequences of gender differences in agriculture.

The collective model of the household predicts that bargaining power determines the share of resources allocated to an individual within the household. The concept of bargaining power is elusive, however. It is perhaps useful at this point to outline the possible determinants of bargaining power, while not making any claims to measure power itself.

Most economic research treats the household as a single agent, assuming that individuals within the household share the same preferences or that there is a household “head” who has the final say. This simple framework has proved immensely useful; despite a common misperception, it can explain many differences in well-being or consumption patterns within households.