The Determinants of Women’s Empowerment in Bangladesh: The Role of Partner’s Attitudes and Participation in Microcredit Programmes

ABSTRACT

This paper employs data from the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (2004) to explore how women’s empowerment is related to partner’s attitudes, participation in microcredit programmes and a set of other socio-economic factors. We use a structural equation model with categorical observed variables. We get that participation in microcredit programmes has a positive impact on both the empowerment’s dimensions considered, while partner’s attitudes effect is weaker, proving that gender community norms are likely to be rooted in women’s minds regardless of the partners’ perceptions of women’s status.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The practice of the purdah varies widely according to the social milieu. Full purdah (especially practiced in traditional circles) requires the complete seclusion of women from the onset of puberty. Within the home, women inhabit private quarters that only male relatives or servants can enter.

Outside the home, a woman in purdah usually wears a veil or an enveloping. For most rural families the importance of women’s labour made full seclusion impossible. In certain areas, for instance, women went unveiled within the village but donned the veil for trips farther from their community (Wikipedia, 2013).

2. Kabeer (2001) defines the three dimensions without indicating the direction of the interrelations.

3. Due to the structure of our data, we cannot perfectly respect the eligibility rule of 0.5 acres (a very small amount of land). Therefore, we have opted for including a land-possession dummy variable.

4. Results are reported in detail in the Online Appendix.

5. Bangladesh Bureau of Educational Information and Statistics.