Review Essay of Gender Challenges (Volumes 1, 2 and 3), by Bina Agarwal

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Notes

1 For earnings as a source of bargaining power over time spent on household chores, see for instance Bertrand, Kamenica, and Pan (2015), and for the relationship between earnings and domestic violence, see Aizer (2010).

2 The Gender Asset Gap project, initiated in 2009, aimed to collect individual data on women and men’s access to and ownership of property, calculate measures of gender asset and wealth gaps and analyse the factors affecting such gaps. See https://www.qeh.ox.ac.uk/content/gender-asset-gap-project (accessed December 12, 2018).

3 Participatory exclusions are direct and de-facto forms of exclusion from participatory forms of governance, and are shaped by rules, norms, social perceptions, endowments and attributes (individual and household).

4 This assumption is typically based on differential wage rates rather than actual differences in productivity, leave alone those that account for differences in equipment and techniques used, age and nutritional intake. Agarwal cites a rare study on potato diggers that demonstrated women were three times more productive than men (Chapter 5, 173).

5 In 2013, mass demonstrations against rape and sexual harassment spread across India, Nepal and Pakistan. Sparked by specific cases of gang rape, and rape or robbery of women, they generated momentum on overhauling the criminal justice laws and procedures related to rape. Over 2017–2018, the ni una menos (“not one more”) movement drew thousands across several South American countries protesting sexual violence and homicide of women. In the same year, #MeToo went viral globally as did discussions in activists and policy making circles on measures to contain sexual harassment in the workplace. Some of the labour protests in the USA saw women and men integrating workplace issues with sexual harassment (workers at McDonald’s, the Marriott group of hotels and, most recently, Google).

6 For institutional bargaining over care work, see Folbre (1994), For children as public goods, see Folbre (2010), and for the links between care work and bargaining power, see Folbre (2017).

7 Labour protests in the USA such as by workers at MacDonald’s, the Marriott group of hotels, and most recently Google, involved unions and/or workers integrating workplace issues with sexual harassment of workers by clients, co-workers and managers.