The effect of women's decision-making power on maternal health services uptake: evidence from Pakistan

Abstract

A large body of research has explored the links between women's decision making and their uptake of maternal health services, but the evidence so far is inconclusive. This study uses the Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement Survey to examine the influence of household decision making on women's uptake of maternal health services. We find that women's decision-making power has a significant positive correlation with maternal health services uptake and that influential males' decision-making power has the opposite effect, after controlling for socio-economic indicators and supply-side conditions. Our findings suggest that empowering women and increasing their ability to make decisions may increase their uptake of maternal health services. They also suggest that policies directed toward improving women's utilization of maternal health services in Pakistan must target men as well as women.

Investigating the disparities in cervical cancer screening among Namibian women

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Individual versus community-level measures of women decisionmaking involvement and child survival in Nigeria

“…The common pattern was that women's empowerment increased the uptake of ANC and postnatal services. [6][7][8] However, the influence of women's empowerment on skilled delivery care was weak in Ethiopia/ Eriteria [9] and Nairobi, Kenya [10] but significant in Nigeria. [11,12] Aside from maternal healthcare utilisation, Adhikari et al, [13] and Desai and Johnson [14] reported that women's empowerment was also a significant independent predictor of child mortality.…”

Household Decision-Making in Malaysia: The Ethnic Dimension

“…AlMamun et al (2014) shows that microcredit programs to increase the income of poor women in urban areas in Malaysia contribute positively to their role in household decision making and empowerment. Education, employment and age are also found to be associated with the level of decision-making power (Jianakoplos and Bernasek 2008;Boateng et al 2014;Sinha 2012;Hou and Ma 2013). Other studies have shown that variations in family structure result in differences in household decision making (McConocha et al 1993;Razzouk et al 2007;Woolley 2003;Yusof and Duasa 2010).…”