Women’s bargaining power and household expenditure in Indonesia: the role of gender-differentiated assets and social capital

Using the Indonesian setting with its cultural heterogeneity, this paper examines women’s bargaining power in the distribution of household expenditures. Women’s share of assets and participation in community-based organizations and development in the village is used to approach bargaining power. This study employs the Indonesian longitudinal dataset from the Indonesia Family Life Survey. The results show that women’s share of assets has negative effect on adult goods expenditure. This finding confirms that women’s share of asset explicitly increase women autonomy not to allocate the budget share on adult goods expenditure which is identical to male domination. Women’s share of assets also has positive and substantial effect on richer nutrients expenditure such as meat and fish and dairy products. It is also found that women participation in the community-based organization in the village has negative and significant effect on budget share of staple food and adult goods expenditure. This finding embraces the importance of women’s power in the household particularly in terms of distribution of household expenditures to the spending that increase the welfare of the household.