ESRC Praises 'Exceptional' OU Research

Gender and Intra-Household Entitlements. A Cross-National Longitudinal Analysis (GenIX) has been recognised for its exceptional research contribution and awarded an outstanding grade by funders, the ESRC. The ESRC report states that the project 'has fully met its objectives and has provided exceptional research contribution well above average or very high in relation to the level of the award, with evidence of major impact on policy and practice'.

Led by Professor Susan Himmelweit, Dr Jerôme De Henau and Dr Cristina Santos, GenIX was a two-year project to understand the factors that influence the entitlements of individuals to household resources. Recent empirical analysis has shown that the distribution of power within households can be far from equal, resulting in unequal command over resources. This in turn interacts with and reinforces gender and other social inequalities in entitlements – entitlements such as consumption, use of time, health, and social contacts – across households.

Explaining the causes of unequal entitlements and power relations within households is crucial in understanding the persistence of inequalities more generally. In particular, GenIX looked at potential learning for policy, including:

• the development of policies to reduce gender inequalities within and beyond households
• avoiding policies' inadvertent worsening of such inequalities
• ensuring that policies are enhanced rather than rendered less effective by households' internal processes.

GenIX formed part of CCIG's Gender, Households and Work research programme. The theme examines resource allocation, decision-making processes and how tasks of everyday living are managed within households.