The Power to Protect: Household Bargaining and Female Condom Use

Rachel Cassidy, Marije Groot Bruinderink, Wendy Janssens and Karlijn Morsink
Additional contact information
Rachel Cassidy: World Bank
Marije Groot Bruinderink: University of Amsterdam
Karlijn Morsink: Utrecht University

No 20-058/VI, Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute

Abstract: Women may face systematically greater benefits than men from adopting certain technologies. Yet women often hold lower bargaining power, meaning that men's preferences may constrain household adoption when decisions are joint. When low female bargaining power constrains adoption of the first-best technology, introducing a version of the technology that is second-best in terms of cost or effectiveness, but more acceptable to men, may increase adoption and welfare. This paper contributes the first explicit model and test of the trade-offs when introducing a second-best technology in such a setting. We conduct a field experiment introducing female condoms (which are less effective and more expensive than male condoms, but often preferred by men) in an area with high HIV prevalence. We observe an increase in the likelihood that women have sex and find strongest adoption of female condoms among women with lower bargaining power, who were previously having unprotected sex.

JEL-codes: C78 C93 I12 J16 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-09-15
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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https://papers.tinbergen.nl/20058.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The power to protect: Household bargaining and female condom use (2021)
Working Paper: The Power to Protect: Household Bargaining and Female Condom Use (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tin:wpaper:20200058

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