L'argent du « ménage », qui paie quoi ?

Abstract

Far from melting into a unique "household budget", male money and female money remain differentiated inside the couple. An elementary analysis of the data of the survey "Family Budgeting" of the Insee shows that the money of each spouse is not always used for the same purpose: Some expenses are clearly gendered. From an ethnographic point of view, what is observed is that the scope, terms and conditions of the pooling of resources within the couple are not a matter of course. The collective budget is more or less restricted, and its explicit negotiation is not always possible nor wished. Finally, when the woman earns less than the man and there is no common account, all households proceed in a way that is at the very opposite of what the notion of "supplementary income" would imply: The "small" salary of the woman serves as the basis for collective money. © La Découverte.