Women’s Empowerment and Ideal Family Size: An Examination of DHS Empowerment Measures in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

The literature on women's empowerment has defined and conceptualized "empowerment" using different and often interchangeable terms, including "autonomy," "status" and "agency." 1,2 According to one definition, empowerment is "the expansion of people's ability to make strategic life choices in a context where this ability was previously denied to them." 3 Two central components of empowerment are the agency and the resources needed to exercise life choices. 2,3 In addition, the construct of women's empowerment encompasses many dimensions, including reproductive, economic, social and cultural, familial and interpersonal, legal, political and psychological, 2 which leads to wide variation in conceptualization. Given this wide variation, women's empowerment is difficult to measure consistently. Studies often assess women's autonomy with an index measuring participation in decision making about various household issues, which represents women's degree of control over their environment. Some researchers include both major decisions (e.g., large household purchases) and minor decisions (e.g., what food to cook) in the index, 4 whereas others exclude day-to-day household choices and those that are traditionally within the woman's domain. 5 Other measures of women's empowerment assess freedom of movement, 6,7 differences in age and education between marital partners, 8,9 and the process of spouse selection. 10Even with a clear definition and conceptualization, these constructs are difficult to quantify in a standardized way within a given population. To measure empowerment at an individual level, researchers must translate the amorphous construct into a set of specific questions that population-based surveys can ask; ideally, those questions would be applicable to individual respondents with a diverse set of social and demographic characteristics. For example, young women who have not had sex would not have the experience needed to answer questions about sexual power. In such a case, hypothetical situations could be used to ascertain attitudes and beliefs, but such situations are often difficult for people to fully understand and respond to realistically. 11Another challenge is the variation in cultural contexts that affect the measurement of women's empowerment. A measure that captures empowerment in one context may have limited relevance in another, as is the case with measures of mobility in communities where free movement is the norm for women. Thus, for the validity of cross-national comparisons, it is important to identify universally applicable measures, regardless of the gender equity environment. (beta coefficients, -0.5 and -0.3, respectively

What do men want? Re-examining whether men benefit from higher fertility than is optimal for women

“…This suggests that a woman's reproductive schedule may reflect her spouse's preferences more than her own. Finally, some direct metrics of female autonomy and indirect measures, such as education, have been implicated as important predictors of fertility decline or lower desired fertility [30,31]. This has led some researchers to suggest that the nineteenth to twentieth century demographic transitions reflect female preferences for lower fertility [3,4], and furthermore that these preferences may reflect females' adaptive reproductive strategies for smaller family sizes [20,32 -35].…”

Married women's empowerment and associated factors on achievement of their ideal number of children in Dilla Zuria woreda, Gedeo zone, Southern-Ethiopia: a community based cross sectional study

“…1,4,5 On the basis of different literatures, women's empowerment should be associated with a smaller ideal number of children in many African countries. 6 Studies conducted in African countries (Nigeria, Guinea, Zambia and Mali) indicated that women's status and empowerment are important factors for controlling and reducing women's fertility through two main pathways: (1) desire to reduce family size and (2) ability of women to satisfy their desire for an ideal family size through the use of family planning methods. As a woman becomes more empowered to negotiate fertility decision making, they have more control over contraceptive use to achieve their desire.…”

Inter-generational co-residence and women's work and leisure time in Egypt

“…Much past literature has explored the many dimensions that can be measured to understand empowerment, including concepts such as power, autonomy, status, agency, mobility, decision-making power, etc. (Hindin 2000;Roushdy 2004;Upadhyay and Karasek 2012).…”

“…First, to measure dimensions of empowerment related to social/cultural norms, we use a series of questions from the Demographic and Health Surveys revolving around acceptability of wife beating, inequality in relationships, gender preferences, etc., as have been used by numerous scholars to measure women's empowerment (Linos, Khawaja, and Al-Nsour 2010;Upadhyay and Karasek 2012). Second, we use questions about couples' relationship quality, including partner communication, and marital relationship quality, to address another dimension of empowerment related to couples' dynamics and decision-making.…”