Contributing Factors of Women's Autonomy among Muslim and Its Effect on Child Care: Cross Countries Comparison of India, Indonesia and Bangladesh

Navaid Ali Khan , International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)
Priya Sharma, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

Woman autonomy has widely been acknowledged as a major factor that contributes to better health, social, economic and demographic outcomes. Many studies address that Muslim have the poor social, economic and demographic indicators and poor women autonomy because Islam is an obstacle to achieve autonomy or state of women empowerment. But many researchers argue that autonomy of woman construct under the social and cultural inspiration not religious. Poor social, economic and demographic outcomes among Muslim are the results of poor social, economic condition not due to their religion. This paper examine the factors contribute in the construction of women autonomy in the three selected Countries. India, Bangladesh and Indonesia have been selected for this study. Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data, which is national representative survey have been used of this study. Autonomy of women has been used as principal variable of the study and child care, which is use as immunization of children (Includes 3 doses of DPT, 3 doses of Polio, BCG, and Measles). If child received all of these consider as “Full immunized”, if received any of these consider as “Partly immunization”. Bi-variate, Tri-variate and logistic regression technique have been used in this study. Study result shows that autonomy is positive with social, economic factors and significant linked to good child care but social, economic and demographic factor of women is not affecting their autonomy in similar way in all the selected countries.

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 Presented in Session P2. Poster Session Ageing, Health and Mortality