Yet in another sense they are the indispensable fabric of the household, indeed they are the household. A large area of activity within the household is beneath the notice of the men, and this guarantees to the women an autonomy to manage their own affairs without interference. They accept the fact of their own overall inferiority as part of the metaphysical order, but their immersion in a world of their own greatly mitigates this inferiority. They see and understand the indispensability of their own activities, but they know of the world of men in the guest room only at second hand.
The major household resources are in the hands of the household head. Though the women have no generally acknowledged rights to minor domestic products as they have, for example, in rural Ireland, (Arensberg and Kimball (1940) p. 48). Some of them sold us, or tried to sell us, donkey bags which they had made, and in at least one case, kept the money. Women will trade eggs, chickens and grain with pedlars on their own initiative. But many women had obvious difficulties when coping with money, and their use of these resources was at their husband's pleasure. They do not trade outside the village; they go to towns very rarely - many of them never.
In a straightforward sense the mutual separateness and dependence of men and women holds the household together. Neither men nor women can live outside a household. They are also held together by the direct ties between them. But less obviously women are bound to each other by their relationship to men, and men by their relationships to women. It is the husband/son who unites mother-in-law and daughter-in-law and the brothers that bring the wives together. Conversely, it follows from the fact that sons leave the paternal home to escape a stepmother, that the mother/son tie is one factor which binds the son to the father. Finally, one of the main responsibilities that unite the agnate male core of a household as a group is their joint duty to safeguard the honour of their women.
Between parents and children, the gulf of generation is wide