A recent ideological revolution promoting women's status has raised questions concerning determinants of autonomy and their implications for policy formation. This study seeks to identify objective indicators determinant of autonomy, and then examine their relationship in light of women's subjective experiences of autonomy. Potential determinants include education, literacy, household size, age at marriage, employment, and socioeconomic status. Analyses are based on these data sets: the 2000 Bolivia Family Interaction and Children's Well-Being (FICW) Survey, the 2000 Peru Demographic Health Survey and the 1997/1998 Nicaraguan Demographic and Health Survey. Our findings indicate that autonomy is multidimensional. Utilizing Structural equation modeling, we identify two major domains autonomy: decision-making autonomy and personal autonomy in Bolivia, and family autonomy and public autonomy in Nicaragua and Peru. This study shows that each of our specified determinants has some influence on autonomy, with education and socioeconomic status being the most important. We conclude that policies designed to change educational, economic, and familial characteristics of women will only have a modest impact on women's overall sense of autonomy.In recent years there has been an ideological revolution in theories of human rights. This ideological shift has been accompanied by efforts to improve the status of women worldwide. While governments, researchers, and volunteers have implemented programs and policies aimed to better the lives of women in developing countries, their efforts have produced varying results (Blim 2001;Emadi 1993;Safa 1995). A shortcoming manifest in these efforts is that we still do not know much about which types of policies are most effective. This is mostly due to inadequate -and often contradictory -information available about which familial, educational, and economic factors affect women's status.The success of social reform policies relies upon a firm understanding of how specific indicators of autonomy interact with women's actual experiences. Potential policies might be aimed at educational Population Research and Policy Review (2005) 24: 283-300 Ó Springer 2005