**Table 3.** Average share of decision-making activities in which women and men are not directly involved in the decision but have effective power

||Women|Men|Diff|
|---|---|---|---|
|Share of all decisions not directly involved but|0.13|0.22|0.08***|
|have effective power|(0.26)|(0.32)|(0.02)|
|Observations|746|716||

_Notes: Standard errors in parentheses. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1. All estimations are computed using survey weights to address sampling. Shown difference is 0.08 rather than 0.09 due to rounding. Those who are directly involved in all seven decisions are excluded from these estimates._

# **6. Who has effective power across household types?**

In this section, we compare direct engagement and effective power in decisions across activities of husbands and wives within different types of households. We then explore the decision-making power of young unmarried men and women who live with their parents.

According to the qualitative data, marriage represents the watershed moment after which a man takes on the role of husband along with decision-making power. The decision-making dynamics vary, however, by the household composition. There are different processes through which intra-household power dynamics unfold in a couple household as compared to extended family households, for example. Contrary to the previous tables, where we showed results for all men and women in our sample households, in Table 4 we focus only on husbands and wives. In a couple household, where the husband and wife are the only adults, when an individual is not directly involved in the decision, the other spouse is typically making the decision. In these households, husbands and wives are involved directly in the same share of decisions on average (nearly six of seven decisions) (Table 4). But husbands are more likely than wives to have effective power in the decisions when they are not directly participating in the decision-making. That is, husbands are more likely to delegate or influence the decision indirectly than wives when not a decision maker. This is particularly the case in decisions regarding water. Wives are directly engaged in two to three decisions on average of the three water activities, whereas husbands are directly engaged in one or two decisions on average. But when not a decision-maker, husbands are more likely to be involved indirectly in the water decisions than their wives.

Husbands and wives living in households with the husband’s parents are less likely to be involved in decisions directly than husbands and wives who live on their own as a couple (Table 4). Both are involved directly in 4 to 5 decisions of the seven on average. Like with couple households, husbands are more likely than wives to have effective power in decisions when they are not directly participating in the decisionmaking. Even so, wives have more effective power in these households than in couple households when they are not directly engaged in a decision. This is particularly the case in decisions regarding water. When not directly involved in the decisions regarding the household’s water activities, the mother-in-law is often the decision maker, and the daughter-in-law may be able to influence these decisions.

In terms of personal individual decisions, in these households, when the wife is not directly involved in the decision, it is typically her husband who makes the decision, but, in some households, it is the in-laws. Unlike with the water decisions, women are more likely to have effective power over personal individual decisions when her husband is a decision maker than when her in-laws make the decision.

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