The Status of Married Women

Abstract: In this paper I hypothesize that under individual maximization, the costs of transacting (primarily due to the costliness of measuring wives’ and husbands’ input, output, and consumption) may explain why throughout most of history, husbands have been the primary household decision-makers and wives subordinate decision-makers; why have husbands been in control of family resources and having the ability to penalize their wives, and why bride price went to her parents and not to her. Competition between husband and wife over marital income is dissipating. To minimize the dissipation they may choose between husband dominance and sharing.. Sharing gives wives bargaining power and enhances their rights. The parties switch from husband dominance toward sharing when: 1. Productivity differential between the two declines. 2. Cost of monitoring falls. 3. Markets for their outputs and services emerge, as they lower the cost of evaluating contributions and consumption and open outside options for the wife. Competition in the marriage market, partly through dowries and bride price, equalize the contributions of the two to what they receive. Through norms and legal institutions, society imposes constraints on the marriage partners to increase the number of surviving children as well as to enhance household income, especially in making dissipation-reducing commitments easier to enforce.