Essays on Women’s (Dis)advantage in Access to Resources

Abstract

This thesis investigates gender inequality in access to resources in both developing and developed countries across three chapters.
The first chapter examines intrahousehold gender inequality in effort and its link to nutritional disparities in rural Burkina Faso. Using six months of continuous activity tracker data to measure effort and monthly anthropometric data, three key findings emerge. First, contrary to conventional wisdom, women work more intensively than men. Second, household members with lower bargaining power tend to work more and consume less, resulting in poorer nutritional outcomes. Finally and worringly, women are particularly disadvantaged in terms of nutritional status, especially during periods of food scarcity and in households where they bear a larger share of physical work.

The second chapter uses Public Good Games to investigate the extent to which spouses in polygamous households are inclined to cooperate when mutual gains are at stake. Two main conclusions emerge. First, co-wives with low agency are more prone to cooperate with each other than with their husbands. Moreover, when they share mutual interests, they tend to unite against their husbands' interests. This suggests that co-wives with low agency have a greater incentive to coalesce to improve their collective access to household resources, as they are individually marginalized. Second, increasing wives' participation in decision-making enhances cooperation and household efficiency.

The third chapter combines poverty and premature mortality data to explore the evolution of gender inequality in total deprivation in the United States, using the generated deprivation index. The results indicate that women remain more deprived than men, even when considering their advantage in life expectancy. Gender inequalities against women are particularly pronounced among minority groups (Hispanics and Blacks).

Date of Award	14 Jun 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Namur
Sponsors	University of Namur
Supervisor	Catherine Guirkinger (Supervisor), Lorenzo Trimarchi (President), Jean-Marie Baland (Jury), Jordan Loper (Jury) & Julia Vaillant (Jury)