# **1. Introduction**

Empowerment is the ability to make strategic decisions to command resources and influence outcomes (Kabeer, 1999, Kabeer, 2005). Agency, a concept central to empowerment, is the ability to define one’s goals and aspirations and exercise one's own choices to reach desired outcomes (Kabeer, 2001, Kabeer, 1999). Agency includes claiming the right to influence important decisions as a strategic part of the empowerment process (Annan et al., 2021) and cannot be understood outside the context of the individual’s own goals and the values deemed important to her (Sen, 1985).

In the literature, measures of agency and empowerment are often operationalized through questions regarding decision-making (see Donald et al., 2020, for an overview). Many studies use survey questions on women’s participation in household decisions related to health care, expenditures, children’s education, visits to family, family planning, and agriculture to create either separate indicators measuring whether the individual considers herself a decision-maker, or a combined index to proxy agency (e.g. Hou and Ma, 2013). These indicators focus on what Sen (1985) describes as the “person's ability to make choices and to control procedures directly (whether or not he or she is successful in achieving the desired goal)” (Alkire, 2008)—or more precisely, a specific enactment of this control where the individual is actively exercising that ability. It is control over the process of choice, or procedural control, regardless of the outcome.

Conceptually, there are limitations to measuring empowerment in this way. For example, it is often assumed that if a person does not participate in making decisions, it means that she does not have power to influence the decision. In addition, many studies focus on the decision-making of married women with respect to their husbands. Yet, in many contexts, intergenerational or extended family households are common—and different dynamics may be at play when decisions are made with a mother-in-law or son, rather than a spouse.

In this paper, we use unique mixed methods data on decision-making within rural households in Kilifi County, Kenya, collected between October 2022 and March 2023, to better understand when not participating in decision-making might be a form of agency. Our data is unique in that it allows us to examine decision-making across various family relationships and roles within the household, and to interrogate the way household composition relates with decision-making power, or authority or influence in decisions made in the household, and forms of agency.

Our intrahousehold survey was administered to all adults in the household, going beyond the usual focus of just the husband and wife. Questions are asked about the decisions made about the household’s water, including water collection, allocation, and expenditures. Because water collection and allocation are often within women’s domain, these provide new insights into intrahousehold decision-making. In addition, we ask more traditional decision-making questions on health care for oneself, visits to one’s family or relatives, and on how the money one earns is used. We also draw on qualitative data on intrahousehold decisionmaking processes and norms, with a particular focus on securing water for the household.

Kilifi County, which is on the eastern coast of Kenya just north of Mombasa City, is predominately inhabited by the Giriama people, one of the ethnic groups that make up the Mijikenda peoples. Households traditionally consist of a large homestead with several small huts built on the compound. Extended families often live together on the compound and share daily tasks. Sons’ and nephews’ homes are often situated alongside their father’s or uncle’s homes. The Giriama are traditionally polygamous and in some homesteads, co-wives reside together, although not necessarily in the same dwelling. The homestead may have a shared ‘kitchen’ building, and the group may share cooking responsibilities. Water for the household