ABSTRACT
When their reproductive and household tasks are reduced, women are able to increase their economic production and, according to my theoretical framework, if cultural, political, and economic factors allow, to increase the economic resources under their control. Furthermore, macro-level political and economic changes can have a positive effect on women’s economic activities, control over factors of production, and control over marketable surplus production. This chapter illustrates these relationships in one province, Luang Prabang, demonstrating specifically (1) that changes in domestic work were related to increased production and (2) that political and economic changes through the socialist and liberalization periods had a positive impact on women’s economic power under some circumstances. Continuing economic changes may, however, undermine rural women’s economic power in the future. Women from the three focal ethnic groups, conditioned by the different kinship, religious, and cultural patterns described in Chapters 2 and 3, responded differently to changes in domestic labor and to political and economic changes. I draw most information in this chapter from data gathered between 1986 and 1990 in fourteen villages participating in a women-focused development project aimed at improving rural conditions by alleviating women’s drudgery while supporting and supplementing women’s productive capabilities. 1 I augment this information with data from two other studies of rural Luang Prabang villages (Håkangård 1990; Luang Prabang Rural Micro-Projects 1990, 1991—hereafter LP Micro-Projects).
