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Women’s bargaining power and household expenditure in Indonesia: the role of gender-differentiated assets and social capital

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Abstract

Using the Indonesian setting with its cultural heterogeneity, this paper examines women’s bargaining power in the distribution of household expenditures. Women’s share of assets and participation in community-based organizations and development in the village is used to approach bargaining power. This study employs the Indonesian longitudinal dataset from the Indonesia Family Life Survey. The results show that women’s share of assets has negative effect on adult goods expenditure. This finding confirms that women’s share of asset explicitly increase women autonomy not to allocate the budget share on adult goods expenditure which is identical to male domination. Women’s share of assets also has positive and substantial effect on richer nutrients expenditure such as meat and fish and dairy products. It is also found that women participation in the community-based organization in the village has negative and significant effect on budget share of staple food and adult goods expenditure. This finding embraces the importance of women’s power in the household particularly in terms of distribution of household expenditures to the spending that increase the welfare of the household.

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Author notes

  1. Evita Hanie Pangaribowo

    Present address: Department of Environmental Geography, Faculty of Geography, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Bulaksumur, Sleman, Yogyakarta, 55281, Indonesia

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Geography, Faculty of Geography, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Bulaksumur, Sleman, Yogyakarta, 55281, Indonesia

    Evita Hanie Pangaribowo &  Sukamdi

  2. United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), Bonn, Germany

    Daniel Tsegai

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  1. Evita Hanie Pangaribowo
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  3. Sukamdi
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Correspondence to Evita Hanie Pangaribowo.

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The paper is based on data analysis of publicly available secondary data-set. The survey and its procedures have been reviewed and approved by Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) in the USA (at RAND) and in Indonesia.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 10, 11, 12 and 13.

Table 10 Household expenditures based on women’s social capital.
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Table 11 The effects of women’s participation in community meetings on budget share of vegetables, dairy products, alcohol and tobacco goods, and nonfood expenditures.
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Table 12 The effects of women’s participation in the PKK on budget share of vegetables, dairy products, alcohol and tobacco goods, and nonfood expenditures.
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Table 13 The effects of women’s participation in POSYANDU on budget share of vegetables, dairy products, alcohol and tobacco goods, and nonfood expenditures.
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Pangaribowo, E.H., Tsegai, D. & Sukamdi Women’s bargaining power and household expenditure in Indonesia: the role of gender-differentiated assets and social capital. GeoJournal 84, 939–960 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-018-9901-4

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