Agency and Autonomy: Subversive Practices in Intergenerational Intra-Household Bargaining in Karachi

Abstract

This research explores inter-generational changes within gendered intra-household bargaining patterns in order to understand women’s agency and autonomy in decision-making and their freedom of choice. Utilising Kabeer’s (1999) concept of Agency and Empowerment and Sen’s (1999) Capability Approach, I draw on interviews with fifteen respondents who belong to four joint family households in Karachi. My interviews are designed to pick up on intergenerational changes within these households, as well as ethnic differences across them. My study is about the extent to which younger generations, and especially women, have renegotiated intra-household bargaining patterns over generations and across different ethnic groups in one multi-ethnic, urban metropolis in the global south.