By focusing on the household as the unit of decision making the implications of complex intra-household negotiations and needs on overall economic growth are often overlooked. Consequently, it is essential to examine the junctures at which the interests of men and women converge and diverge. From a policy point of view, it can be useful to distinguish between two types of needs -strategic and practical. Practical needs are those required to fulfil women's and men's different jobs and roles. Strategic needs are those required to shift women's and men's roles in the society they live in.
Strategic needs are the relative status of women to men within society.
These vary in each context and are related to gender divisions of labour, resources and power. Both contribute to economic production, the reproduction of children, and community management. However, as a general rule, men are able to concentrate on a single productive role and fulfil their multiple roles sequentially while women, in contrast, are obliged to fulfil their multiple roles simultaneously. Women must balance competing claims on limited time for each of them. Women and men often face very different cultural, institutional, economic and physical constraints because their roles in society are different, and can be rooted in systems of discrimination and bias.