The Rules We Live By: Gender Norms and Ideal Images
good wife can do everything skillfully and with ease. Whether she works for pay or not seems to be secondary to household obligations. In rural Velugodu (Andhra Pradesh), India, a good wife, according to the women’s group, “always chooses to work from home.” In Olsztyn, a large city in Poland where women have been out in the workforce for decades, a good wife “copes perfectly with her obligations.” However, another woman retorted, “She lives 26 hours a day.” In urban Bukoba, Tanzania, the men’s attributes of a good wife included that “she must do business as well,” but when asked how a good wife finds time for all this, one of them offered, “I think that, if she is employed, it is her fault. Let her do all her work also.” Discussion groups also compared today’s and the previous generation’s good wife. Many recalled that, in their mother’s time, a good wife was more submissive, patient, quiet, and tolerant of being ill-treated. And a good wife in the past typically did not earn income, which was often viewed as undesirable. In rural Chiclayo, Peru, men said that a good wife in the previous generation was “dedicated to the home … scared of her husband, and hard working.” Women in Umlazi township A (near Durban), South Africa, maintained that a good wife “would have stayed in the marriage even if the husband was beating her.” In Olsztyn, Poland, one women’s group did not mention problems of violence, but they felt that a good wife of their mother’s generation was treated like a servant or “kind of slave.” In a semi-rural community of Ngonyameni, South Africa, men voiced nostalgia for earlier times when wives were more obedient: “They respected their husbands. They did not argue with them. What is happening today is just a shame.” Similarly, a woman from University Quarter, West Bank and Gaza, recalled, “[The good wife from my mother’s generation] used to remain quiet and not argue with the man.” Most focus groups of both sexes concurred that today’s good wives are less obedient, less respectful, and less patient, and more likely to talk back and argue with their husbands. While there are exceptions, most women viewed these changes in a good wife—and in gender relations generally—favorably and described their families as now closer and friendlier. According to a village woman in Velugodu (Andhra Pradesh), India, “a good wife then was more accommodating and patient, and today’s good wife is smart and ambitious.” This perception of change is crucial. For women to become empowered in the domestic sphere, they must use their agency to negotiate the nature of gender relations in the household, which in turn may influence the decisions made within it. Women’s public roles may have changed in recent decades, but the limited changes in gender relations within the private sphere allow unequal gender relations to persist.4
The Good Husband Set against the many ideal qualities of a good wife, focus groups depicted a good husband as the “real head of household,” “a worker,” “employed,” and “always working hard for his family.” In addition, women in rural Sumadija District, On Norms and Agency • http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-0-8213-9862-3
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