Gender relations and household economic planning in the rural Philippines

In much of rural Southeast Asia today, single-income households organized by a sexual division of labour around one core economic activity, such as fishing or farming, have largely given way to households characterized by multiple income sources and occupations, such that the co-heads of a household often pursue occupationally distinct economic lives. For example, the male co-head may engage in vegetable gardening while the female co-head operates a small store, and so on. Within particular households, diversification of economic activities and associated occupational multiplicity often develop over the course of a household's developmental cycle, such that in a household that begins with only a single economic activity (for example, farming), other economic activities are subsequently added (fishing, a business enterprise, and so forth) as the household develops and matures. This last observation raises some important questions about intra-household decision-making processes over time: Where do ideas for these additional economic activities come from, who pursues them, and how is it decided which particular activity to pursue next? In short, there are significant economic planning questions here that go to the heart of the notion of 'household strategies' and the question of the degree to which households do in fact 'strategize' for the future. The rural Philippines presents a good opportunity to explore such questions. Philippine households are typically pooling households, where women share control over household resources with men, and many households of even modest economic means do devise and attempt to implement economic plans for the future involving occupational diversification. (1) Further, the co-heads of these households can be quite explicit in response to questioning about their plans. Thus, they may describe a strategy for investment or an image of where they would like the household to 'be' in, say, five years; for example, by adding a motor to a fishing boat currently powered by oars, by fencing a distant parcel of land so that cattle may be run on it, by developing a hog-raising enterprise, and so on. That households can and should engage in such planning for the future, if they are to prosper--specifically, that they should have a piano--is in fact an important local notion, but of course to say that many household co-heads can articulate such plans when asked is not to say that they will eventually implement those plans successfully. Making the Philippine case of particular interest is the fact that husbands and wives, as household co-heads, are culturally said to share--and typically do share--household planning responsibility. (2) Yet husbands and wives may have different notions about how best to proceed. Hence the first question explored in this paper: How does gender figure in the notions that household co-heads hold regarding what is best for a household's economic future? Now it is widely said--indeed, it is emphasized--that for a household's piano to be successful, the co-heads must discuss and agree to it, implicitly acknowledging that male and female co-heads often do have different initial views. It is also widely said that at least on some occasions, this needed husband-wife discussion does not take place, at least not to the satisfaction of both parties, and some household co-heads attempt to (unilaterally and unsuccessfully) implement a plan, and to draw upon pooled resources, without the agreement and cooperation of the other. Hence the second question explored in this paper: By what process of discussion and negotiation are the separate and sometimes conflicting gendered notions of household co-heads regarding 'what's best' for the future melded into a common household plan or 'strategy'? Answers to these questions bear on a broader debate regarding the relative validity of unitary and collective models of the household, (3) a debate that revolves in part around conflicting views of how best to theorize the relationship between individual preferences and household behaviour. …