Working women and power within two-income Turkish households

We examine the issue of gender power by developing four proxies using data from a field survey conducted in Izmir, Turkey. Four proxies for power include income, absolute and proportional spending, and personal leisure time and all are defined relative to the spouse. We find that women have relative power with respect to monetary measures with a high correlation between intra-family status and socio-economic stratum. In addition we find evidence that working women bear a heavy home work burden. However, we also find that there is a strong socio-economic component to this result, where the lower the socio-economic stratum, the smaller are the number of leisure hours. © 2001.