IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envira/v31y1999i2p291-304.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Free Markets and the Marriage Market: Structural Adjustment, Gender Relations, and Working Conditions among Dominican Women Workers

Author

Listed:
  • H I Safa

    (Center for Latin American Studies, University of Florida, PO Box 115530, Gainesville, FL 32611-5530, USA)

Abstract

I argue that the neoliberal reforms brought on by structural adjustment appear to have contributed to a deterioration of the job market and a greater prevalence of female-headed households in the Dominican Republic. On the basis of data collected in 1994 among women working in a free trade zone, I show that structural adjustment increases the need for women to work, because of cuts in government programs, declining real wages, growing inflation, and a deterioration in male employment, which weakens the man's role as principal breadwinner and increases the importance and visibility of women's contribution to the household economy. This change in the gender composition of the labor force has encouraged some women to resist marriage and/or remarriage because the ‘marriage market’ of eligible men willing and able to support a family has been reduced, contributing to greater marital instability.

Suggested Citation

  • H I Safa, 1999. "Free Markets and the Marriage Market: Structural Adjustment, Gender Relations, and Working Conditions among Dominican Women Workers," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 31(2), pages 291-304, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:31:y:1999:i:2:p:291-304
    DOI: 10.1068/a310291
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a310291
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1068/a310291?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Assaad, Ragui & Arntz, Melanie, 2005. "Constrained Geographical Mobility and Gendered Labor Market Outcomes Under Structural Adjustment: Evidence from Egypt," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 431-454, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:31:y:1999:i:2:p:291-304. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.