Reproductive transitions and women’s status in Indian households

Megan N. Reed

Population Studies, 2021, vol. 75, issue 3, 325-341

Abstract: Using panel data, this study tracks the impact of reproductive transitions on women’s status in the household in India. Here, status refers to the social benefits that women experience by meeting societal expectations related to childbearing. The analysis shows that becoming a mother is associated with increased freedom of movement and access to enabling resources. The adoption of permanent contraception—a common life course event marking the end of childbearing in India—is associated with increased freedom of movement but has no association with changes in access to enabling resources. Household decision-making, another dimension of women’s status examined in the paper, is less dynamic over time and there is limited evidence of its association with reproductive transitions. The findings illustrate the tight linkages between household power dynamics and the life course in the South Asian context, and highlight the centrality of women’s role as mothers in determining their social position.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00324728.2021.1904147 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:rpstxx:v:75:y:2021:i:3:p:325-341

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rpst20

DOI: 10.1080/00324728.2021.1904147

Access Statistics for this article

Population Studies is currently edited by John Simons, Francesco Billari, James J. Brown, John Cleland, Andrew Foster, John McDonald, Tom Moultrie, Mikko Myrsklä, Alice Reid, Wendy Sigle-Rushton, Ronald Skeldon and Frans Willekens

More articles in Population Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().