Women's Empowerment and Modern Contraceptive Use: Evidence from Four Southeast Asian Countries

Modern contraceptive prevalence rates differ across Southeast Asian countries due to the different levels of socio-economic development, cultural practices, and women's empowerment. This study investigates the relationship between women's empowerment and modern contraceptive use in Cambodi...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of international women's studies 2023-06, Vol.25 (4), p.1-16
Main Authors: Ang, Chiew Way, Lai, Siow Li
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age differences
Attitudes
Birth control
Children
Clinical decision making
Condoms
Contraceptives
Decision making
Economic development
Empowerment
Family planning
Health
Health care
Health services
Health surveys
Households
Marriage
Mass media
Mass media effects
Media violence
Multivariate analysis
Occupational status
Ownership
Primary care
Residence
Socioeconomic development
Socioeconomic factors
Wealth
Wives
Women
Work status
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Modern contraceptive prevalence rates differ across Southeast Asian countries due to the different levels of socio-economic development, cultural practices, and women's empowerment. This study investigates the relationship between women's empowerment and modern contraceptive use in Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, and the Philippines, where Demographic and Health Surveys data are available. The main study variables include modern contraceptive use (as measured by the percentage of married women aged 15-49 currently using a modern contraceptive method) and women's empowerment measures, which include asset ownership, household decision-making, and attitudes towards spousal violence. Binary logistic regression is used to assess the association between modern contraceptive use and women's empowerment, controlling for the effects of women's age, education, work status, exposure to mass media, exposure to family planning via media, place of residence, wealth index, age at marriage, and number of living children. Results show that pills and injections were commonly used across the countries under study. Multivariate analysis reveals that women with greater empowerment were more likely to use a modern contraceptive method, but the effect varied across women's empowerment indicators. It is important to empower women in the household as disempowered women tend to neglect their rights to access primary health care, which could jeopardize their health. Hence, empowering women remains an important agenda for improving modern contraceptive use within Southeast Asian countries.
ISSN:1539-8706