Defining women’s incomes: household disruptions and gendered resolutions

Abstract Women increasingly work for pay, disrupting cultural expectations and relational dynamics tied to men’s breadwinning. Scholars have examined how women’s incomes impact measures of domestic gender inequality, yet there is limited research on the mechanisms underlying that relationship, including how households define and spend women’s wages. Adopting economic sociology’s relational work approach, this study shows how tandem processes, relational accounting of feminine consumption and relational obfuscation of women’s earnings, shape the meaning of women’s work—processes that extend beyond marital dyads to involve siblings, children, and parents. Drawing from interviews with sixty-four Emirati women and men, I show how households leverage contradictory feminine consumption norms to designate women’s wages as communal resources, while at the same time, they conceal women’s financial contributions and disproportionately recognize men’s breadwinning. I call these relational adaptations to the breakdown of patriarchal bargains predicated on men’s provision gendered resolutions, because they illustrate processes through which women’s wages may paradoxically uphold unequal gendered arrangements. This study offers a framework to understand shifting gender relations during periods of economic change.