Agrarian Change and Gender Relations in South‐east Iran

Shahrashoub Razavi

Development and Change, 1994, vol. 25, issue 3, 591-634

Abstract: This article looks at some of the recent cross‐disciplinary debates on the nature of the household, and in particular the need to juxtapose intrahousehold gender relations against the wider socio‐economic context within which households are embedded. It places particular emphasis on the development of market forces, seen as a neglected theme in research on gender relations in rural Iran. Drawing on village‐level fieldwork, the ‘conjugal contracts' in two neighbouring districts of the Iranian province of Kerman are located within the wider network of socio‐economic relations in which both men and women are involved, taking into account the varied development of commercial agriculture, as well as the impact of state policies and the changing balance of social forces. Although these developments account for some of the observed differences in conjugal relations between the two districts, shared notions of ‘household unity’ and ‘wifely duty’ are also highlighted as critical factors shaping the conduct of husband and wife in ways that are comparable across the two districts. The pressures that are brought upon men and women with the development of market forces in one of the districts, while making women relatively more vulnerable in certain respects, have enhanced their assertive‐ness within marriage — often in defiance of deeply‐embedded ideologies that subsume their interests to those of their households.

Date: 1994
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7660.1994.tb00528.x

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:devchg:v:25:y:1994:i:3:p:591-634

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0012-155X

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Development and Change from International Institute of Social Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().