This working paper from the World Bank’s Gender Innovation Lab, Africa region, uses mixed methods data from households in Kilifi County Kenya to explore indirect ways in which people within a household pursue their goals when they are not directly involved in a decision. Traditional decision-making measures underestimate the agency of some individuals—particularly that of husbands and fathers, who can disproportionately rely on their preferences being met through their effective power by proxy. The paper makes recommendations for survey methods to combat assumptions around who is involved in household decision-making and how.
