Reproductive transitions and women’s status in Indian households

Abstract

Using panel data, this study tracks the impact of reproductive transitions on women’s status in the household in India. Here, status refers to the social benefits that women experience by meeting societal expectations related to childbearing. The analysis shows that becoming a mother is associated with increased freedom of movement and access to enabling resources. The adoption of permanent contraception—a common life course event marking the end of childbearing in India—is associated with increased freedom of movement but has no association with changes in access to enabling resources. Household decision-making, another dimension of women’s status examined in the paper, is less dynamic over time and there is limited evidence of its association with reproductive transitions. The findings illustrate the tight linkages between household power dynamics and the life course in the South Asian context, and highlight the centrality of women’s role as mothers in determining their social position.

Keywords:

• women’s status
• women’s empowerment
• mothers
• sterilization
• life course
• household decision-making
• India

Notes

1 Please direct all correspondence to Megan N. Reed, 3718 Locust Walk, McNeil Building, Ste. 353, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6299, USA; or by Email: [email protected]

2 This research received support from the Graduate Training in Demography [grant number 5T32HD007242-38] awarded to the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania by the NIH Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The author thanks Emily Hannum, Herb Smith, Pilar Goñalons-Pons, Annette Lareau, Aashish Gupta, and Alejandro Sánchez Becerra for their comments on earlier versions of this paper.