# **7. HOUSEHOLD DECISIONS SHAPE DEVELOPMENT OUTCOMES**

While Sudan’s formal institutions, informal institutions, and markets exert a great deal of influence over women’s and youth’s ability to accumulate human capital endowments and seek, obtain, and maintain employment, individuals’ positions in their households, for example, wife versus husband, their relations with their immediate and extended family members, and, critically, their ‘perceptions’ of these positions and relations may be equally important in shaping their economic opportunities. In this section, women’s and youth’s voices and bargaining power are discussed in the context of their ability or inability to engage in income-generating activities. This section draws heavily on the qualitative research that was conducted in Sudan between May 2019 and March 2020 employing KIIs and FGDs in Khartoum, Madani, and Nyala (details are provided in Annex 1).

## **Stifled personal and professional aspirations**

Decisions made at the household level are informed by the external context and household-level needs and preferences, and they have an impact on individual-level human capital accumulation, agency, and economic opportunities (World Bank 2012b). While the latest data show that a similar share of young women and young men enroll in tertiary education, the prevailing norm is that this is more important for men: more than a third (36 percent) of male Arab Barometer respondents believe that university education is more important for males than females, compared to almost a fourth (24 percent) of female respondents (Arab Barometer 2018). The decision as to whether a girl or a boy should drop out of school is generally decided at the household level. In other words, it is not just rural Sudanese girls and boys who are making decisions about their futures, but their families, especially their fathers. It is not just rural Sudanese girls whose personal and professional aspirations may go unrealized but those of many Sudanese youth as well.

When asked what they wanted to achieve in their adult lives (in the case of youth) or had wanted to achieve (in the case of adults), focus group participants spent more time mentioning professional rather than personal goals. For example, a female youth from Khartoum who had a job said, “I want to complete my studies and work by the certificate/degree I will take, in a good company, and to achieve good position in this company, like to be a manager for example.” Another female youth from Khartoum who was also working said, “Yes, but something related to women, like beauty center for example, this is my dream.” A man from Khartoum who had a job said, “I wished to be an engineer.” Another working man from Khartoum said, “Yes of course it was everybody’s wish to go to military school in a certain period of time. All the Sudanese guys wished to be officers.” Even though most focus group participants had professional aspirations, whether now or in the past, it was clear that most of them had not been able to realize them. Two sets of reasons were primarily mentioned for this: (a) country-level reasons, that is, Sudan’s interwoven political crises and economic crises, and (b) family or household reasons. With respect to country-level reasons, a working woman from Khartoum said, “Yes, it is good to have dreams, and each one wants to be better in the future, but the conditions of the country are not helping any to achieve their dreams.” A male youth from Nyala who did not have a job said, “I have many ambitions and great, but hands are limited, because here we will not be 45