Bargaining over money and land: Changing intra - household gender relations in rural Colombia.

This thesis examines transformations in spouses bargaining power regarding land and money within rural households over the last 70 years and underlying factors in the context of both long-standing and recent rural changes in Colombia. The research takes an intra-household perspective drawing on Sens cooperative-conflict model, separate spheres bargaining models and Kabeers framework of power across institutional sites, as well as other feminists contributions to bargaining models. The thesis uses the life course theory to draw out interrelated factors (e.g. material, ideological, emotional and state interventions) which have affected intra-household bargaining power regarding assets over time in the larger socio-economic context of Latin Americas new rurality. The research settings are two villages in a rural municipality in the central region of the Colombian Andes. One of these, Romita, has undergone substantial change with an increasing population and diversification of its productive activities towards non-farm activities. The population of the second village, Peña Blanca, has decreased and the diversification of productive activities is not as evident. Through a detailed study of intra-household gender relations I have demonstrated in this thesis that spouses make decisions about money and land more jointly now than before, irrespective of what each contributes in terms of money and independently of whether or not s/he owns land. This trend towards more joint decisions about money and land has been largely determined by the fact that joint household headship is increasingly becoming as the social norm and practice in Paipan households. In many cases joint household headship coexists with two separate heads and even with husband-centred household headship. A household model representing just one of these types of household headship cannot explain the simultaneous presence of different types of headships within one household in rural settings such as Paipa. These changes to social norms and practices of household headship have occurred due to the influence of changes in civil law, although the former have been slower to change than the legislation. Shifts in notions and practices of household headship and in law have been linked to women¿s greater awareness of their personal practical and strategic interests regarding money and land.