To Provide and Protect: Masculinity and Money Management in Ukrainian Families

• In Event: 500 - Regular Session. Gender in a Global Context

Abstract

In this study, I focus on the meaning of breadwinning in Ukrainian families. What does money symbolize, and how do spending and saving strategies reflect cooperation and conflict in couples? My research uses in-depth interviews and nine months of fieldwork in Kyiv, Konotop, and Shumsk to answer these questions and develop theories of financial control and trust in families. Contemporary Ukraine offers a rare opportunity to study what happens to control over money in families during times of financial stress and societal transformation. In Soviet times women managed and often controlled household income, but money carried less power in the socialist economy. I hypothesize that as money gained importance in the new market economy, men seized control of it within their families. In my interviews with 105 Ukrainians I find support for this hypothesis only among wealthy families. In most cases, couples strategically manage money to act like “good” husbands and wives. Simple practices like spending “his” money for rent and “her” money for food help couples perform gender and "do couple." Yet by minimizing conflict, these gender performances prevent women from using money as a bargaining tool in family interaction, thus maintaining male advantage in family dynamics.

Author

• Nadina Lauren Anderson, University of Arizona