Women’s Autonomy and Contraceptive Behavior among Bangladeshi Women

Women’s autonomy is a potentially important but less studied indicator of using contraception among women as well as ability to control their fertility. Using the data from Bangladesh Demographic Health Survey (BDHS) 2007, we try to establish a relationship between women’s autonomy variables and contraceptive behavior. Results of the study indicate that ever use of contraception is significantly associated with household decision-making autonomy, movement autonomy and financial autonomy, but only movement autonomy is significant for current contraceptive users. Multivariate analyses also indicate that both women’s decision-making autonomy and movement autonomy are significantly associated with discuss about family planning with their husband and future intention to use contraception. These measures of women’s autonomy provide additional independent explanatory power of contraceptive behavior net of some other socio-demographic variables. Thus, this study argues in favor of increasing women’s autonomy to increase contraception using rate in this population.