Marriage Outcomes and Women Empowerment After Marriage: A Three Countries Story

This paper provides a first step in the analysis of an understudied phenomenon: women’s bargaining power after marriage. Using a Multiple Index Multiple Causes (MIMIC) Model, the paper studies the relationship between women’s bargaining power within her household after marriage and her pre-marital power. This later is reflected in her marriage characteristics; such as the divorce payment, the jewelry she received from her husband in addition to her husband characteristics. The MIMIC model was estimated using the ELMPS (2012) data for Egypt, the JLMPS (2010) for Jordan and the TLMPS (2013) for Tunisia. Results show that empowerment has a significant positive effect on the five decision indicators for the three countries. Moreover, it was evidence that there is considerable difference between the three countries in terms of determinates of post marriage decision-making power. In general, the determinants affecting women’s empowerment in Tunisia are not the same as in Egypt or Jordan. Ultimately, we can conclude that, although pre-marriage bargaining power is playing significant role in women’ post marital empowerment in Egypt and Jordan. It is mainly individual characteristics and husbands’ characteristics that affect women’s post marital empowerment in Tunisia. This could be due to the difference in culture and social context in Tunisia as compared to Jordan and Egypt. This result confirms the importance of norms, traditions and culture factors as causes that affect woman empowerment in general as well as her state after marriage.