CARPET WEAVERS AND WEAVING IN THE ... - Cornell University

1992, Gumen 1989). Responsibilities change from region to region, village to village,
and even house to house, with women from wealthier families only working in the
fields when hired labor is scarce (Morvaridi 1992, 574). Though a wide variety of
tasks can be assigned to women, they are not involved in agricultural management
(Akpinar et al. 2004, Moravidi 1992).
While women may take on men’s tasks when there is a lack of male labor or
when men migrate for work, men never take on tasks assigned to women (Akpinar et
al. 2004, Morvaridi 1992, Kandiyoti 1990). Women’s labor is often viewed by both
women themselves and the men in their families as an extension of their household
responsibilities and thus not as a “real job”. It is cheaper to hire a woman to work in
the fields than to rent farm equipment, and cheaper still to rely on unpaid family labor,
thus new technology is more likely to be adopted to facilitate men’s labor as opposed
to women’s (Morvaridi 1992, 574). This is also true because men control the
household’s money (no matter who actually earned it) and make decisions about how
the money will be spent (Kandiyoti 1990, 101).
Since women risk social standing by communicating with non-kin men, men of
the household are generally the ones who negotiate contracts for women’s labor or sell
the products thereof (Akpinar et al. 2004, Moravidi 1992). Owing to the fact that men
view women’s work as an extension of their responsibilities as wives and daughters
they often undervalue women’s labor (Akpinar et al. 2004). As unpaid laborers
women act as a buffer to help the family through financial hardship. Their labor for
specific tasks is utilized as necessary, but when it is no longer needed they have other
duties to attend to (Morvaridi 1992, 579).
Nonetheless, women are aware of their position as breadwinners and know that
they can perform all of the tasks necessary to keep the household running. One
woman in Morvaridi’s study said, “We can survive without our men. The only thing
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