Can women's autonomy impede male involvement in pregnancy health in Katmandu, Nepal?

Britta C. Mullany, Michelle J. Hindin and Stan Becker

Social Science & Medicine, 2005, vol. 61, issue 9, 1993-2006

Abstract: Women's empowerment programs focus primarily on increasing the decision-making power of women, while male involvement/couple-friendly programs emphasize communication and negotiation within couples in making decisions. In-depth-interviews and focus group discussions were conducted to investigate patterns of household decision-making and the context of male involvement behaviors in Katmandu, Nepal. A questionnaire focusing on household decision-making and husbands' roles during pregnancy was administered to 592 pregnant women receiving antenatal services at a large maternity hospital. Multivariate regression techniques were used to compare male involvement behaviors across varying levels of women's autonomy, represented by different decision-making patterns. Higher women's autonomy, as measured by her sole final decision-making power, was associated with significantly lower male involvement in pregnancy health. After adjustment for other covariates, each additional decision in which a woman had final say was associated with a significantly lower likelihood of her husband accompanying her to antenatal care (OR=0.70, p

Keywords: Nepal; Women's; autonomy; Male; involvement; Decision-making; Pregnancy; health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(05)00171-1
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:61:y:2005:i:9:p:1993-2006

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().