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Determinants of Women Empowerment in Bangladesh

SBS Anawar
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Dhaka, Bangladesh

MA Islam*
Department of Agricultural Statistics, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh-2202, Bangladesh

S Majumder
Department of Agricultural Statistics, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh-2202, Bangladesh

F Misu
Department of Agricultural Statistics, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh-2202, Bangladesh

Abstract/ Executive Summary:

Women empowerment is one of the most important factors to bring the women in to the development process with their full potentiality. In Bangladesh almost half of the population are women. There are many initiatives to empower women in Bangladeshi society and there is a gradual change evident in recent research. This study attempts to identify the recent status of women empowerment and its determinants using Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (2007) in order to provide better policy options regarding the issue. The data analysis suggest that despite the fact that almost all of the women under study are somewhat empowered but still 65.28% women are less empowered. Logistic regression analysis revealed that the rural women have higher chance to be empowered than the urban women and similar likelihood is relevant to the poorest women than the poorer women. The wives of the farmers have higher possibility of being empowered than the wives of husbands with other occupations. Astonishingly, the wives of uneducated partners have higher likelihood to be empowered than the wives of higher educated partners. The women having spousal age difference less than 6 years have higher likelihood of being empowered than their counterparts. The women having marital duration less than 5 years are more likely to be empowered than the women having marital duration of 5 years and more. The unemployed women are more empowered than the employed women which required further investigation. The research suggested some recommendations for further improvement of the women empowerment in Bangladesh.

Keywords: Women empowerment, Logistic regression, Bangladesh demographic, Health survey.

Location: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Start Date:

End Date:

Program Area: Socio-economic and Policy

Non-commodity: Employement

Objectives:

This research aims to evaluate the status of women empowerment and its determinants in Bangladesh using the nationally representative Demographic and Health Survey.

Methodology:

Data: This study is based on the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS) 2007 (NIPORT et al., 2009). This survey is the fifth in a series of national-level population and health surveys. The survey utilizes the women data of 2001 Bangladesh census. The data was collected over a five-month period from 24 March to 11 August, 2007. From BDHS (2007), 10,996 data were found for women. Here, those women were selected who have one marriage experience, among the age group 15 to 49 years. This selection is done because it may result very critical calculation to find out the women condition that have once, twice or more than twice marriage experiences. The missing information was rejected from the data set as they can create problems in the further analysis. Finally, the analysis was run with a sample of size 3586. Twelve independent variables were chosen to represent the dependent variable women empowerment: age of the respondents, their division, area of residence, religion, wealth index, marital duration with their last husband, partner’s and respondent’s occupation, partner’s and respondent’s education, number of boys and girls they had and the age difference between partners and respondents.Here, women empowerment index is created by four measurements like mobility, decision making power, employment and if the respondent is the family head or not. Mobility is calculated with three points like ability to go to the relative's house, go to the medical center and go to the outside the house, and decision making is considered with five points like ability to make decision for household purchases for daily needs, about large purchases, about respondent's own medical treatment, about children's health care and about respondent’s own income. These two measurements (mobility and decision making) along with the employment and household headship of the respondent are given hypothetical range (0 to 2) indicating a range 0-10 for the overall empowerment score. If the respondent scores zero after summing up her scores of abilities then she is considered as a not empowered person; if she scores more than zero but less or equal to 5 then she is considered as less empowered person; the high empowerment is considered when the score is more than 5 but less or equal to 10. As there is no non-empowered woman in the data, there are only two groups of women: less and high empowered considered in the analysis. Methods: Binary Logistic Regression Model: Let Y be a dichotomous dependent variable, say women empowerment taking values 0 and 1 and suppose that Y=1, if the woman is high empowered and Y=0, if the woman is less empowered. Also, let X be an independent variable.

Source of Information: J. Sylhet Agril. Univ. 3(1):81-87, 2016 ISSN: 2308-1597

Article Link (Online Journal):

Funding Source:

Budget:

Total Budget (Tk.) :

Achievement/Findings:

Women empowerment in Bangladesh seems to be in the right track but still many things to do to convert the less empowered to high empowered. This may be done in many ways. The determinants identified in this analysis will guide in this process. One important recommendation from this research would be to suggest disaggregated (component wise) analysis of women empowerment and devise policy options accordingly. This will enhance the gender development process and which will allow targeting different vulnerable groups. Despite many important findings this research has its limitations too. This paper is a part of study which covered both intimate partner violence (IPV) and women empowerment (WE) where only the BDHS 2007 was eligible to offer both in its questionnaire. This research also explored the relationship between the two (IPV and WE) and found no direct relationship, hence not reported in this article.

Knowledge Management: Journal