Sharing norm, household efficiency and female demand for agency in the Philippines

Households in the Philippines are characterized by durable unions and a relatively high status of women who are entrusted with the management of household finances. In this setting conducive to cooperation, we expect households to be less inefficient than in other contexts and women to be more inclined to contribute to household income than men. We run experimental games with couples in the rural Philippines i) to test the existence of a sharing rule favouring women; ii) to measure the degree of overall household efficiency and iii) to trace the latter to gender specific behaviors. We first find the prevalence of a strong sharing norm whereby women secure about two thirds of the total couple payoffs, in line with their prominent role in the family. However, couples, and in particular women, incur large efficiency losses of about half of the potential gains offered by the games. We interpret this finding as revealing a strong, latent demand for agency by women who express a strong preference for own money over (larger) transfers from their husband as the latter involve an implicit control over their use. These findings challenge a naive view of female empowerment that solely focuses on the nominal control over household resources.