Difference Transfers from balances after deducting the Transfers and Gifts given to and received from others. In this regard, Transfers and Gifts could also be considered what economists call “unearned”
income. About 12 of the 16 female diarists at least doubled the money they actually earned if we take into consideration the contributions gained from Gifts and Transfers. In contrast, only one of the male diarists doubled the actual amount of money he had, after accounting for the balances in Transfers and Gifts. This gives light to the structural income inequalities between men and women as well as the prevalence of social relationships in the area. As exemplified by the table above, women have access to more social resources than men in terms of the gifts and transfers that they received. This allows them to have more access to capital that they otherwise would not have access to.
Yet access to social resources does not necessarily lead to an „expansion‟ of agency, as these transactions are bounded by the underlying rules in society.
Mourning Gifts
In order to exemplify how the different types of social resources become available to people in reality, we take a look at the monetary process that follows the mourning for the dead. Monetary gifts in Bangladeshi society are given when somebody dies. Female diarist Kami lost her husband during the course of the study. She works occasionally as a
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part time house maid. She is illiterate. Her husband was injured carrying rice sacks four years back and have never recovered fully from the accident. Because of religious customs, she could not work for eleven days after her husband died.
Friends, relatives and neighbors helped her during the days following his death and the days before because of his ailment. The total amount of gifts she received from others amounted to 16,255 taka. Her biggest expense after the death was a 1,000 taka piece of cloth she bought for the funeral after his death and a 1,100 taka fee paid to the priest who hosted the ceremony. Her husband had an account with ASA, a local microfinance provider, which she closed after his death and removed all his savings. She had her loan balance paid off out of her husband‟s death insurance (an ASA scheme) and still received a total of 3,430 taka. Prior to her husband‟s death, Kami received almost 1,000 taka in gifts to commemorate the anniversary of her son‟s death.
Here we see how Kami‟s agency to be able to work is overridden by the overarching cultural rule predetermined by tradition in Bangladesh society. This form of mourning is countered monetarily by the form of gifts offered to Kami, which she used to pay for the expenses of her husband‟s death and to take care of her daily expenses. The social resources gained enabled the mourning process to happen and work partially as a social insurance to the widow until the end of the eleven days and beyond. This exemplifies how rules and resources recursively create structures in society.
Occupations
Our diarists had different occupations. While male diarists rely mostly on their own labor as a source of cash, most of the female diarists earned money from sources unrelated to their labor. We account for the primary and secondary occupation of each of the diarists.
In total we counted 24 forms of labor that the diarists were involved in. Out of these 24 labor types, female diarists were only involved in 7 different types. Table 4 summarizes the results.
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Table 4: Income Classes for Male and Female Diarists
Male Diarists'
The most recurrent forms of labor for both female and male diarists were the categories of Others, Farm Sales and Wages. However, the jobs available to men differ from those of women. We see that male diarists have a wider array of possible professions which they can specialize in such as hair cutting, fishing, or driving a rickshaw. One of the male
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diarists even works part time as a traditional healer or kabiraz, while 2 of the male diarists work as drummers in a local band.
On the other hand, female diarists‟ options resemble as a lot of them work informally, doing various tasks such as part-time farming; few earn an income from rent while only two of them own a shop. For the female diarists, the category of Others includes the sale of various items such as iron, paper, rice, coal and leather, doing day labor jobs like brick-breaking, as well as money earned from attending agricultural training programs.
Patriarchal power relations play out in Bangladeshi society, were women tend to work in more informal and irregular jobs, without specializing in a specific profession and focusing more on the raising of children and household work. About 87.50% of the women in the study engaged in some type of informal labor, compared to 39.13% of men.
This exemplifies how the individual agency of women to develop in a specific profession is thus subdued by the rule of Bangladeshi society. Because their occupation possibilities are limited, gifts and transfers work as social redistributive mechanisms that have the effect of lowering the chaotic financial situation that women often times face. These social resources allow women to do and be more things which they would not be able to otherwise as they provide a safety need for them to build while at the same time bind them to the rules which constrict them. As with mourning gifts, the rules behind each type of social resource available to women varies according to the specific custom one is dealing with.
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