The first is the idea that macroeconomic policies and events are linked with people and households, or percolate through to them, via a system of institutions —which include the State, the market and the community— that operates in neither a fully automatic nor a fully organized manner. This system functions within a gender-based framework that is founded upon power relations in which a visible, male-oriented policy approach dominates or influences an invisible, female-oriented one (Carrasco, 2001 and 2003, Elson, 1995a and 1999, Blau, Ferber and Winkler, 2002). The introduction of a gendered framework of considerations and factors sends out biased or skewed signals to the market, where, given the assumption that women workers are “expensive", employers are reluctant to hire them or, once hired, to continue to employ them.1 Employment decisions therefore entail a process of bargaining and conflict in which both material and immaterial factors wield influence.