Stopping childbearing: Not a woman’s decision

Much has been talked on the empowerment of women and increasing their decision making power in the use of contraception and age at first pregnancy. However, the decision of stopping childbearing is not something that is decided by the women in many cases.

Utilizing the 2007 BDHS data, this study examined the differential effect of decisionmaking power index on the use of contraception across different age cohorts of women.

The findings indicated more pronounced impact of women’s decision making power to increase contraception use aged above 25 than below 25 aged women. This implies more needs of promoting decision making power among the younger women (below 25) than the older women (above 25) for the betterment of family planning.

Strikingly, decision making power did not show significant influence on decision of stopping women’s childbearing in any of the younger and older women cohorts.

Reference:

Alam, N., Haque, M.E., Sumi, N.S. and Hossain, M.A., (2013) IMPACT OF DECISION-MAKING POWER INDEX ON FERTILITY BEHAVIOR AMONG WOMEN OF DIFFERENT AGE COHORTS IN BANGLADESH, Bangladesh Journal of Scientific Research 2013, 26 (1&2), 61-73

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