Women’s autonomy and fertility control: Evidence from rural Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu

Pages: 1215-1219
Girija Kumari (Department of Sociology, Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu)
Sampath Kumar (Department of Sociology and Population Studies Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu)

More direct efforts to influence fertility behaviour address gender equality in more specific ways. In low-fertility settings, many countries have policies that seek to raise fertility by offering various incentives, some of which make for greater gender equality. In high fertility settings, many countries in the developing world have had policies that seek to lower fertility. To examine the autonomy of women in fertility control behaviour in Coimbatore Descriptive study was done among rural women through multi stage sampling technique and a pretested interview schedule was used for data collection. Nearly 50% of them are between the age group of 26 -30 years and about 70% of them had education till Diploma/graduate level. The age at marriage was between 18-25 years for about 90% of the mothers. About 62% of the respondents have a high level of reproductive autonomy which shows that they have a freedom of thought on birth spacing. There was a significant association between age, education, employment, type of family, monthly income, head of the family, duration of marriage life in years and Religion with the reproductive autonomy. The study reveals that to improve contraceptive use through improving women’s education and employment can play a major role in enhancing women’s autonomy.