From Rags to Riches:

Abstract

Summaries This article examines the contradictory implications of rising rural incomes – generated through export crop production – for women in a rural community of south?eastern Iran. It uses two different, but related, ways of capturing how women have fared in the context of these socioeconomic changes. First, defining well?being in terms of lsquo;functionings’, it looks at the gender?differentiated patterns of deprivation expressed in terms of infant and child mortality. It then explores issues of ‘vulnerability’ which are highlighted in women's own accounts of well?being; vulnerability refers to the bundles of risk from the deterioration in women's independent entitlements and from the changes in conjugal relations that are hemming women in and making them more dependent on male incomes. By juxtaposing these two accounts the article concludes that while conventional well?being indicators (measured directly on the individual) are more conducive to obtaining a gender?differentiated picture of deprivation than are household?based measures (as in the poverty line approach), they are nevertheless limited in the extent to which they can capture different aspects of gender discrimination. These neglected dimensions of gender discrimination may be precisely the ones that get exacerbated when rising cash flows are directed into male hands.