Women and the subsistence sector: Economic participation and household decision making in Nepal

TLDR: In this paper, the authors investigated the relationship between sociocultural, economic, and demographic factors and the extent of women's participation in the market economy and their confinement to subsistence agricultural production and domestic work.

Abstract: This paper attempts first to analyze how various sociocultural, economic, and demographic factors affect the extent and structure of female economic participation in the large subsistence economy of rural Nepal. It then investigates the relationship between these variables and the extent of womens' input into the household decision-making process. Among the specific hypotheses examined is the supposition that the strength of female decision-making power in the household is positively affected by women's participation in the market economy and negatively affected by their confinement to subsistence agricultural production and domestic work. The paper also investigates the hypothesis that women's decision-making input is inversely related to the income status of the household.