Placing the household in perspective: A framework for research and policy

This paper attempts to create a gender related conceptual framework around the household, which can be put to use in research and policy. Policy makers' understanding about the household is drawn from economics and it is both limited and unrealistic. Therefore, this study opens the concept of die household for analysis, showing how it is imperative to consider familial dynamics for arriving at a clearer perception of intra-domestic functioning. Analytically, the household and the family are reconciled into the concept of the domestic unit, using a multidisciplinary approach. The close connection of women's lives to the domestic unit they live in, makes it necessary to focus upon power disparities within it. The concept of the domestic unit opens doors to multidisciplinary explanatory variables, which can make sense of seeming irrationalities that constitute intra-domestic functioning. This paper also develops the concept of space to arrive at a measure of power and empowerment. A parallel concept of environment (domestic and macro) is used to establish the nexus between micro and macro phenomena. Against the Indian backdrop, it also traces conceptual routes to suggest how effects of macro changes, like economic restructuring, on women can be ascertained within domestic units. The purpose of the entire exercise is to assist in the quest of social scientists to arrive at usable constructs that bring hypotheses closer to reality. The philosophy underlying development efforts is questioned in the process. The issue of whether the human being is an active subject, rather than a passive object, is seen separately from the problem of heralding her/him for intrinsic or instrumental value. While both values are recognized as important, this paper stresses the need to see people as active subjects with a will to develop.