Production, reproduction, and the sexual division of labor in an agrarian setting: A contextual analysis of rural Turkey.

Abstract

Most studies of the association between productive characteristics and reproductive behavior of rural households assume a unidirectional causal structure with the latter as the dependent variable. This study argues that the two are mutually causative. To test this general theoretical position, a dynamic view of the household is adopted. Past demographic behavior is shown to affect present productive characteristics, which in turn affect attitudes, behaviors and intentions predictive of future demographic behavior. A model of household production as embodying multiple processes is developed to enable a focus on gender asymmetry and the division of labor by sex as central factors in household decision-making. The specific hypotheses generated using this model are tested with data from a national household survey conducted by the Population Studies Institute at Hacettepe University in Ankara, during the summer of 1968. The survey data is supplemented with province-level information collected by the author, to allow for tests of contextual effects. The findings suggest that within the exchange-value sub-process of household production, the ratio of consuming to producing members is positively associated with the intensity of effort, as would be predicted by Chayanov's theory of family farms. This result is most pronounced among subsistence-level households. Contrary to Chayanov's predictions, however, women, who dominate use-value production, respond to demand pressure by attempting to reduce their labor inputs through (a) limiting the number of young children in the household by covertly practicing contraception even when men wish additional children to help in production; and (b) diverting family income toward the purchase of labor-saving domestic technology rather than supporting its investment in farm technology. The results indicate that during the 1960s, rural Turkish households responded to subsistence pressures more than to market incentives, as predicted by Chayanov, but that women resisted such pressures by finding ways to decrease rather than increase their effort. Women's resistance is an absent feature of Chayanovian models, but critical for predicting individual responses within households.