ABSTRACT
The interface between the household and the labour market is an under-researched area despite its relevance for the distribution of economic outcomes between men and women (Polachek 1995; Humphries 1998). Here we begin to fill this gap by studying the conditioning influence of household organization, itself influenced by customary practices and legal rights, on female labour supply, as well as the way in which consequences of women selling their labour to the market feed back into intra-household dynamics. Our sample consists mainly of members of the East Ugandan Gisu. They are well-known in the anthropological literature for extreme levels of internal violence in the early 1960s and for the draconian measures they subsequently took in enforcing predictability of behaviour in order to restore a degree of interpersonal trust (Heald 1998). Echoes of these measures still resound in the daily life of the villagers in our two survey areas: Bufumbo sub-county in Mbale district and Sironko township in Sironko district.
