IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0104633.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Women's Empowerment and Contraceptive Use: The Role of Independent versus Couples' Decision-Making, from a Lower Middle Income Country Perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Waqas Hameed
  • Syed Khurram Azmat
  • Moazzam Ali
  • Muhammad Ishaque Sheikh
  • Ghazunfer Abbas
  • Marleen Temmerman
  • Bilal Iqbal Avan

Abstract

Introduction: There is little available evidence of associations between the various dimensions of women's empowerment and contraceptive use having been examined - and of how these associations are mediated by women's socio-economic and demographic statuses. We assessed these phenomena in Pakistan using a structured-framework approach. Methods: We analyzed data on 2,133 women who were either using any form of contraceptive or living with unmet need for contraception. The survey was conducted during May - June 2012, with married women of reproductive age (15–49 years) in three districts of Punjab. The dimensions of empowerment were categorized broadly into: economic decision-making, household decision-making, and women's mobility. Two measures were created for each dimension, and for the overall empowerment: women's independent decisions, and those taken jointly by couples. Contraceptive use was categorized as either female-only or couple methods on the basis of whether a method requires the awareness of, or some support and cooperation from, the husband. Multinomial regression was used, by means of Odds Ratios (OR), to assess associations between empowerment dimensions and female-only and couple contraceptive methods. Results: Overall, women tend to get higher decision-making power with increased age, higher literacy, a greater number of children, or being in a household that has superior socio-economic status. The measures for couples' decision-making for overall empowerment and for each dimension of it showed positive associations with couple methods as well as with female-only methods. The only exception was the measure of economic empowerment, which was associated only with the couple method. Conclusion: Couples' joint decision-making is a stronger determinant of the use of contraceptive methods than women-only decision-making. This is the case over and above the contribution of women's socio-demographic and economic statuses. Effort needs to be made to educate women and their husbands equally, with particular focus on highly effective contraceptive methods.

Suggested Citation

  • Waqas Hameed & Syed Khurram Azmat & Moazzam Ali & Muhammad Ishaque Sheikh & Ghazunfer Abbas & Marleen Temmerman & Bilal Iqbal Avan, 2014. "Women's Empowerment and Contraceptive Use: The Role of Independent versus Couples' Decision-Making, from a Lower Middle Income Country Perspective," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(8), pages 1-9, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0104633
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0104633
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0104633
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0104633&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0104633?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ruth Alsop & Mette Bertelsen & Jeremy Holland, 2006. "Empowerment in Practice : From Analysis to Implementation," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 6980.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alkire, Sabina & Meinzen-Dick, Ruth & Peterman, Amber & Quisumbing, Agnes & Seymour, Greg & Vaz, Ana, 2013. "The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 71-91.
    2. Solava Ibrahim & Sabina Alkire, 2007. "Agency and Empowerment: A Proposal for Internationally Comparable Indicators," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(4), pages 379-403.
    3. Sekabira, Haruna & Qaim, Matin, 2017. "Can mobile phones improve gender equality and nutrition? Panel data evidence from farm households in Uganda," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 95-103.
    4. Stephen Baffour Adjei, 2015. "Assessing Women Empowerment in Africa," Psychology and Developing Societies, , vol. 27(1), pages 58-80, March.
    5. Wakunuma, Kutoma & Masika, Rachel, 2017. "Cloud computing, capabilities and intercultural ethics: Implications for Africa," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(7), pages 695-707.
    6. Luis Fernando Gamboa & Paul Andrés Rodríguez-Lesmes, 2018. "Subjective Earnings and Academic Expectations of Tertiary Education in Colombia," Revista ESPE - Ensayos sobre Política Económica, Banco de la Republica de Colombia, vol. 36(86), pages 159-177, June.
    7. Leonardo Letelier S. & Héctor Ormeño, 2018. "El mapa de la descentralización fiscal en Chile," Journal Economía Chilena (The Chilean Economy), Central Bank of Chile, vol. 21(3), pages 004-040, December.
    8. Maria Ana Lugo & Esfandiar Maasoumi, 2008. "Multidimensional Poverty Measures from an Information Theory Perspective," Working Papers 85, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    9. Hillenbrand, E. & Karim, N. & Mohanraj, P. & Wu, D., 2015. "Measuring gender-transformative change: A review of literature and promising practices," Monographs, The WorldFish Center, number 40647, April.
    10. Monica Schuster & Miet Maertens, 2017. "Worker Empowerment Through Private Standards. Evidence from the Peruvian Horticultural Export Sector," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(4), pages 618-637, April.
    11. Nicola Banks, 2014. "Livelihoods Limitations: The Political Economy of Urban Poverty in Bangladesh," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series 19914, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    12. Margherita Scarlato & Giorgio d'Agostino & Francesca Capparucci, 2016. "Evaluating CCTs from a Gender Perspective: The Impact of Chile Solidario on Women's Employment Prospect," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(2), pages 177-197, March.
    13. Bowen, Dawn S. & Miller, Amy Leap, 2018. "Education, leadership, and conservation: Empowering young Q’eqchi’ women in Guatemala," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 28-34.
    14. Collins, LaPorchia A., 2022. "Identifying Profiles of Empowerment: Does the Empowerment Mix Matter for Food Security?," 2022 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Anaheim, California 322538, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    15. Yacob A. Zereyesus & Vincent Amanor-Boadu & Kara L. Ross & Aleksan Shanoyan, 2017. "Does Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Matter for Children’s Health Status? Insights from Northern Ghana," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 132(3), pages 1265-1280, July.
    16. Sato, Mine, 2016. "Empowerment through Enhancing Agency:Bridging Practice and Theory through Crystallizing Wisdom of a Third-Country Expert," Working Papers 129, JICA Research Institute.
    17. Elizaveta Perova & Renos Vakis, 2013. "Improving Gender and Development Outcomes through Agency : Policy Lessons from Three Peruvian Experiences [Promoviendo la capacidad de decidir y actuar : una ruta hacia políticas más efectivas]," World Bank Publications - Reports 16259, The World Bank Group.
    18. Vijayamohanan, Pillai N. & Asalatha, B. P. & Ponnuswamy, B., 2009. "Women in Development – Dissecting the Discourse," MPRA Paper 13119, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Caroline Moser & Andrew Norton & Alfredo Stein & Sophia Georgieva, 2010. "Pro-Poor Adaptation to Climate Change in Urban Centers : Case Studies of Vulnerability and Resilience in Kenya and Nicaragua," World Bank Publications - Reports 3001, The World Bank Group.
    20. Claudio Araujo & Catherine Araujo-Bonjean & Victor Beguerie, 2018. "Community mills and women's empowerment in Burkina Faso," CERDI Working papers halshs-01958755, HAL.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0104633. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.