Final Thoughts
women’s roles to expand into men’s roles in the household rather than the reverse. (There is little opposition within a household, for example, if a man opts to take on more domestic work.) Sometimes this tension can become violent. Violence and the threat of violence or abuse play a role in reinforcing the status quo and in discouraging women’s efforts to challenge existing expectations and norms. Despite the resilience of gender norms, our study found evidence of women’s agency increasing in some strategic life choices (chapter 3). The most powerful results in terms of norms evolving toward gender equality and resulting in greater agency are in the expansion of education for girls (and women). However, they remain more constrained by household preferences and strict gender roles in how many years they can attend school and which fields they can study. Younger generations of women are also demanding more control over marriage and childbearing than older generations, and they are participating more and more in these decisions. And, while in many cases this control does not translate into outcomes, young women—and young men—harbor different aspirations than their parents, such as having fewer children, getting more education, and marrying later. The structure of opportunities and the social pressures surrounding them do not always allow their aspirations to materialize, but often they achieve a middle point. Exercises in the study to look at levels of, and changes in, power and freedom suggest positive progress for women, but less for men (chapter 4), which is partly explained by their different starting points. Men as the traditional power holders are accustomed to having more freedom than women. Men report fewer improvements in their sense of agency, but they benchmark their gains and losses against a higher base line. When compared to men, women in our study in general feel more empowered than 10 years ago. The rising availability of economic opportunities, increasing levels of education, and growing control over reproductive choices have been central in enabling women to gain more decision-making power in their lives. Looking at the ladders of freedom and power created by the women and men in the study, we found that men tended to equate power more directly and more narrowly with their economic success. In this respect, many have been disappointed in their ability to find jobs they want to do and acquire the incomes they aspired to. Communities where both men and women feel more empowered now than 10 years ago were a small fragment of the sample, but they generally experienced more rapid economic growth (and consequently more job opportunities) and had more women in decision-making positions in public institutions and private organizations. Given that norm change is slow and incremental rather than seismic, what role is there for development interventions to influence movement toward gender equality and normative change? Earlier chapters detail examples of the variables and combinations of variables that expand or constrain the space for renegotiating norms. The focus group discussions suggested that the interplay between desire for change at the individual level, the opportunities to effect On Norms and Agency • http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-0-8213-9862-3
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