2. Md. Morshedul Haque
Research Fellow
Dept. of Population Science and Human Resource Development
University of Rajshahi, Rajshahi-6205, Bangladesh

3. Md. Golam Mostofa
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Population Science and Human Resource Development
University of Rajshahi
Rajshahi-6205, Bangladesh

4. Towfiqua Mahfuza Islam
M. Phil Fellow
Dept. of Population Science and Human Resource Development
University of Rajshahi, Rajshahi-6205, Bangladesh

Correspondence:
Md. Ismail Tareque
Email: tareque_pshd@yahoo.com

Introduction

Women's empowerment is a matter of basic human rights. Interest in women's empowerment among demographers and population policy makers was heightened during the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo, at which the empowerment of women was legitimated as a social goal and enshrined as a necessary condition for population stabilization (Hodgson and Watkins 1997). Since then, critiques of demographers' views of gender and women (Presser 1997; Watkins 1993) have grown apace with the wealth of empirical studies investigating women's empowerment and its demographic consequences (Amin et al. 1994; Balk 1994, 1997; Chowdhury and Trovato 1994; Dharmalingam and Morgan 1996; Greenhalgh and Li 1995; Jejeebhoy 1995; Kritz ans Makinwa-Adebusoye 1995; Malhotra, Vanneman, and Kishor 1995; Morgan and Niraula 1995; Schuler and Hashemi 1994). The World Bank has identified empowerment as one of the key constituent elements of poverty reduction, and as a primary development assistance goal (World Bank, 2001a). Empowerment has been used to represent a wide range of concepts and to describe a proliferation of outcomes. The term has been used more often to advocate for certain types of policies and intervention strategies than to analyze them, as demonstrated by a number of documents from the United Nations (UNDAW 2001; UNICEF 1999).

The empowerment of women is an essential precondition for the elimination of world poverty and the upholding of human rights (DFID, 2000:8). Keller and Mbwewe (1991) describe women's empowerment as "a process whereby women become able to organize themselves to increase their own self-reliance, to assert their independent right to make choices and to control resources which will assist in challenging and eliminating their own subordination". According to ICPD there are five components of women's empowerment: 1) women's sense of self worth 2) their right to determine choices 3) their right to have access to opportunities and resources 4) their right to have the power to control their own lives, both within and outside the home and 5) their ability to influence the direction of social change to create a more just social and economic order, nationally and internationally. Hashemi and Schuler (1993) defined the empowerment of women through the use of six spheres: 1) sense of self and a vision of the future, including resisting negative behaviors of the husband; 2) mobility and visibility, including how women are treated when they are traveling; 3) economic security, including cash income, new skills and knowledge; 4) status and decision-making power within the household, including making purchases on their own; 5) ability to interact effectively in the public sphere, such as joining credit programs, and 6) participation in non-family groups, such as credit programs and solidarity movements.

It is recognized that women work more hours than men particularly in low-income households, more in agricultural than in non-agricultural economic activities, and more as unpaid family laborers than as managers. Even if they do most of the work, men mostly control the decision-making power and ownership of household resources. Garcia and de Oliveira (2001) found that women are highly dependent and have little or no power of decision, or are limited to some badly appreciated domestic duties. The World Bank study in Bangladesh highlights that women have a limited role in household decision-making, limited access and control over household resources (physical and financial assets), low level of individual assets, heavy domestic workloads, restricted mobility and inadequate knowledge and skills that lead to women's vulnerability (Sebstad and Cohen 2002:44). In developing countries like Bangladesh age related variables like age, age at marriage, age difference between spouses etc. affect women's empowerment. Recently, a number of empirical studies have explored the effects of socio-economic characteristics of individuals such as age and education on empowerment of women (Morin & Suarez, 1983; Bellate & Saba, 1986; Riley & Chow, 1992).

Data Source

The data used in this study are taken from Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS - 2004) (Mitra and Associates, 2005) a nationally representative survey of 11,440 women of age 10-49 which was conducted under the authority of the National Institute for Population Research and Training (NIPORT) over a five month period from 1 January to 25 May 2004 using multistage cluster sampling.

Construction of Index

Women's empowerment is multidimensional and is very difficult to measure. It comprises the entire complex of interactions, roles, rights and statuses that surround being male versus being female in a given society or culture (Mason, 1997). However, in our study we have tried to measure women's empowerment in the domestic sphere by making a women empowerment index using the dimensions in accordance with Mason and Smith (2003). The particular aspects or dimensions of domestic empowerment we take are:

1. Women's economic decision-making power.
2. Their household decision-making power.
3. Their physical freedom of movement.

The detailed description of these three dimensions with their relevant indicators is given in Table 1. Then the index of each dimension was constructed where minimum and maximum values were chosen for each underlying indicator. Performance in each indicator is expressed as the minimum and maximum value between 0 and 1 in accordance with the construction method of the Human Development Index (UNDP, 2005) as follows:

Where, (Xij), Min (Xij), Max (Xij) and IVij are, respectively, the actual, minimum, maximum and dimension index.

The Women Empowerment Index (WEI) is then computed in a simple average of these three indices according to the formula below:

WEI = 1/3(economic decision making index) + 1/3 (household decision making index) + 1/3 (freedom of movement index).

Goals

The main objectives of the study are:

• to construct the women empowerment index; and
  
• to explore empirically the links between women empowerment and such socio-demographic variables as age, age at marriage, age difference between spouses, educational attainment etc. in Bangladesh.

Empirical Results and Discussion

Women Empowerment and Demographic Variables: Until recently, the surveys used to study demographic and other development phenomena rarely included relatively direct measures of women's empowerment of the kind used here. Analysts were therefore forced to rely on proxy measures. Among the most commonly used proxies were women's age, age at first marriage or first union, the age difference between husband and wife, women's education and their employment status (Mason 1986). Table 2 provides the mean score of WEI and some selected demographic variables.

In Figure 1, we plotted the women empowerment index value by the respondent's current age which depicts that the empowerment of women increases as age of women increases. We also observed from Table 2 that there is an upward trend in the mean score in the women empowerment index. That is, on average the women who are under 20 years of age are much less empowered than the women who are above 35 years of age. One impediment that a woman faces is the usual norm of early marriage which implies arranged marriages or forced marriages where a woman has no right to choose her marriage partner, infringing on her sexual and reproductive rights. Early marriage usually leads to early motherhood and young women are often threatened by death due to pregnancy-related causes. We also observe from Table 2 that the women who marry earlier (<15 years) are also less empowered than those who marry at older ages (after 20 years). Conclusions to be drawn from this observation is that early marriages for women result in dropping out of school and losing opportunities for economic activities and thereafter less empowerment. The age difference between spouses in Bangladesh is usually big, thus girls most often get married off to men who are considerably older than themselves, and also early motherhood is common here. The result expresses that the women having little age gap with the husband are more empowered than other women.

Figure 1: Graphical Representation of WEI by age

Table 1: Description of dimensions and indicators with their measurement

Table 2: Mean score of WEI by selected demographic variables

Women Empowerment and Educational Qualifications : Education is often argued to increase women's empowerment by increasing their self-confidence and understanding of how to operate in the world (Cochrane 1979). In addition, one of the most important products of education, literacy, is said to increase women's independence from other family members by giving them the means to learn about the outside world on their own (Jejeebhoy 1995). Education has also been argued to enhance women's value in the labor market and hence their income, which in turn is said to decrease their dependency on other family members and hence increase their empowerment (Cochrane 1979, Safilios-Rothschild 1980). Several studies have reported that educational attainment is positively related to women empowerment. Table 3 provides the mean score of WEI by educational qualification of women and their husbands.

From Table 3 we observe that the educational qualification, both for husband and wife affects women empowerment significantly. The result reveals that the mean score of empowerment for women who have higher education (0.7888) is higher than other groups and also this is same for women whose husbands have higher education (0.7674). Conclusions can be drawn here that more education contributes to the fundamental process of women's empowerment.

Table 3: Mean score of WEI by educational qualification

Women Empowerment and socio-economic variables: There are several other quantitative and qualitative factors which could contribute to women's empowerment, particularly qualitative ones, for instance, place of residence, socio-economic status, religious belief etc. which are shown in Table 4.

Table 4: Mean score of WEI by selected socio-economic variables

We observe that urban women are more empowered than their rural counterparts. The rich women are more empowered than other women. It also shows the higher empowerment of poor women than middle class women. The cause may be the poor women become bound to defy the customary social barrier to earn to support their family. In Bangladesh women in the Muslim communities have far lower decision-making power and freedom than women in the non-Muslim community. Thus religion is often important for women's empowerment (Jejeebhoy and Sathar 2001; Mason et al. 2002). Our study also shows that Muslim women are less empowered.

Conclusion

Empowerment of women is not a thing but a process. It has several dimensions and not all dimensions rise and fall together; a single variable such as age at marriage or education cannot logically index all aspects of female empowerment equally well. Based on empirical results and discussion, the overall conclusion of this study is that the level of women's empowerment in Bangladesh is not satisfactory for any of the age groups. Older women have more independence and empowerment than younger women because they have more experience with life, a better understanding of how to get what they want or need, a closer relationship with the husband, or because they have fulfilled certain social obligations to the husband and his family (for example, bearing children or sons) and thus are more trusted than are young wives, over whom tighter controls are maintained.

In much of the developing world, especially in Bangladesh adolescent and child marriage continues to be a strong social norm, particularly for girls. Early female marriage is associated with a number of poor social and physical outcomes for young women. On average, girls who marry as adolescents attain lower schooling levels, which cause lower self confidence, bargaining power, freedom of choices etc. as a result they have less reproductive control and suffer higher rates of maternal mortality and domestic violence and thereafter less empowerment. It is also seen that women with smaller age difference with their husbands are more empowered. It may be due to the fact that if the age difference is little there will have better understanding between husbands and wives and eventually, women's participation in decision-making will increase and the pace of domestic violence will decrease.

Since the empowerment of women is an essential precondition for the elimination of world poverty and the upholding of human rights, the government of Bangladesh should enforce the existing law of minimum age at marriage (18 years). They should take pragmatic steps to increase level of education for both males and females. Also awareness about women's right i.e. fundamental needs, should be increased through the mass media.

References