GENDER ROLES IN A MARITAL RELATIONSHIP IN THE CONTEXT OF PATRIARCHAL SOCIAL NORMS – A GAME THEORETIC PERSPECTIVE

There is mixed evidence in the literature as to whether and how perceived economic independence of the wife and her income relative to the husband affect her bargaining power in a marital relationship. We posit that in the absence of conducive ambient social structure, the bargaining power of the wife can be negated by her compulsion to conform to deeply embedded social norms. We frame a formal game theoretic model of the pertinent problem and ratify the same using a hand-collected primary data set collected from women employed in leading information technology firms in Bangladesh. In empirical support of our framed theoretical model, we find statistical evidence of a significant negative relationship between a wife’s bargaining power and her compulsion to adhere to the ambient patriarchal social norms.