Revision summary
Patriarchal bargain is Kandiyoti’s name for deals with male-dominated order. In India it maps unpaid care, respectability, and informal pay. NFHS, time-use, SHGs, and gig-home work illustrate the living deal. Agency exists inside the constraint. Paid work without a rewrite of care is a new bargain, not the end of patriarchy.
Model answer
Introduction
Deniz Kandiyoti’s patriarchal bargain names the deals women strike with male-dominated orders to gain security, honour, or a limited voice. In contemporary India that bargain organises who does unpaid care, who takes informal pay, and who is allowed public mobility.
Body
The concept
- Classic patriarchy offers protection and respectability in return for obedience, fertility, and household labour.
- When the bargain shifts, women may enter paid work yet keep the double day.
Indian division of work
- NFHS and time-use files show women carrying most unpaid domestic and care work even when they earn.
- SHGs and rural livelihoods programmes can be a new bargain: credit and meetings without a full rewrite of property.
- Upper-caste respectability may keep women out of certain public jobs; poorer women bargain with contractors in construction and domestic service.
- Gig and home-based work extend paid labour into the house, which looks flexible and remains gendered.
Examination
- The bargain is agency inside constraint, not false consciousness alone.
- It can stall as well as enable. A rise in female work participation is not automatic equality.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD PB[Patriarchal bargain] --> SEC[Security honour] PB --> LAB[Unpaid care informal pay] IND[India NFHS SHG gig] --> PB
Conclusion
Patriarchal bargain explains why Indian women trade security for a gendered load of care and informal pay. Oakley made housework visible; Kandiyoti names the deal. Contemporary files show the deal changing, not ending.
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Does a bargain mean women choose patriarchy?
It means they navigate it. The menu of options is already unequal.
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Is the bargain only rural?
Urban professional dual-earner homes still bargain over care and kin duty.
PYQ trend
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