Women increasingly work for pay, disrupting cultural expectations and relational dynamics tied to men’s breadwinning. Scholars have examined how women’s incomes impact measures of domestic gender inequality, yet there is limited research on the mechanisms underlying that relationship, including how households define and spend women’s wages. Adopting economic sociology’s relational work approach, this study shows how tandem processes, relational accounting of feminine consumption and relational obfuscation of women’s earnings, shape the meaning of women’s work—processes that extend beyond marital dyads to involve siblings, children, and parents. Drawing from interviews with sixty-four Emirati women and men, I show how households leverage contradictory feminine consumption norms to designate women’s wages as communal resources, while at the same time, they conceal women’s financial contributions and disproportionately recognize men’s breadwinning. I call these relational adaptations to the breakdown of patriarchal bargains predicated on men’s provision gendered resolutions, because they illustrate processes through which women’s wages may paradoxically uphold unequal gendered arrangements. This study offers a framework to understand shifting gender relations during periods of economic change.

中文翻译：

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定义女性收入：家庭混乱和性别决议


女性越来越多地为有偿工作，打破了与男性养家糊口相关的文化期望和关系动态。学者们已经研究了女性收入如何影响国内性别不平等的衡量标准，但关于这种关系的潜在机制的研究有限，包括家庭如何定义和花费女性的工资。本研究采用经济社会学的关系工作方法，展示了串联过程、女性消费的关系核算和女性收入的关系混淆如何塑造女性工作的意义——这些过程超越了婚姻二元组，涉及兄弟姐妹、孩子和父母。通过对 64 名阿联酋女性和男性的采访，我展示了家庭如何利用相互矛盾的女性消费规范将女性的工资指定为公共资源，同时，他们隐藏了女性的经济贡献，不成比例地承认男性的养家糊口。我将这些基于男性供应的父权交易破裂的关系适应称为性别决议，因为它们说明了女性工资可能自相矛盾地维护不平等的性别安排的过程。本研究提供了一个框架来理解经济变革时期性别关系的变化。