Abstract

In this article, I advance a theory of gendered money and demonstrate how couples give special symbolic meaning to men’s money in domestic exchanges. Unlike previous perspectives on gender and money such as resource theories and gender performance, this framework acknowledges money as a prop and tool that couples use to construct gender boundaries and signal normalcy in the marital relationship. Integrating concepts from economic sociology with Hochschild’s insights on the symbolism of domestic labor, I find that Ukrainians use money as a token and symbol of value, not as a commodity with which to obtain desired outcomes. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 56 married and cohabiting individuals, I discover that couples subvert market meanings of money to enact a Soviet-style gender ideology. By spending men’s money on “necessary” items and avoiding accessing women’s money in the household, couples construct men’s money as both visible and valuable while rendering women’s money non-fungible. These practices highlight the primacy of culture and ideology over relative income, and can help explain the reproduction of male privilege in the household, despite gains in women’s employment and earnings.