Nandini Daniari T he extent and effect of women's autonomy is one of the most important factors contributing to the efficacy of any health and population policy, all over the word. In this context, first the word 'autonomy' needs to be explored a little further. Autonomy indicates the position, voice and decision making power of a woman within the family and the community. In simple words it means the freedom or ability to make decisions or the right to exercise a choice. But this also poses some serious definitional problems. How is one going to understand and exercise the full extent of decision making power, when she is socially conditioned to a certain roll, here the domestic care-giving role?The extent of this decision making power therefore is determined by certain institutions, social norms and the power structure within the family. These restraints, we find much more binding for women than men in every other community, only the degree and the form of the constraint being different. Autonomy is not at all synonymous with status, autonomy at its best can be described as one of the contributing factors to status. On the other had greater autonomy may not mean greater status for women. We may find in some communities women belonging to the 'high-status' families are able to exercise lesser amount of free choice in the context of employment, etc due to socio-cultural norms and values like 'family prestige' etc. For example, an educated woman belonging to a high income status household will definitely seek employment or make greater decisions for the family in West Bengal than her sister belonging to a similar high income family in U.P. or Bihar, because the social and cultural set-up is different between the two regions. In north India it may be seen as detrimental to 'family prestige' for a woman of the family to seek outside employment or come in too much contact of outside world to exercise authority. It is not surprising that greater autonomy helps to reduce the acuteness of gender bias in every part of a woman's life, so is the case of fertility. The high fertility and high birth rate not only puts a country under high population pressure but also seriously affect the lives of women by putting them into a drudgery of continuous child bearing and rearing. Among the various influences that contribute to greater autonomy for women, i.e. determinants of autonomy, one major factor is female literacy and female education. The causal link between female literacy and female education. The causal link between female literacy and fertility is particularly clear and has been widely observed all over the world. This link holds in the case of India, too. But within the country, there are large interstate differences in both the levels of literacy and fertility; Kerala, which has attained almost universal level of literacy throughout the state has crossed the 'replacement leves of fertility' (i.e. total fertility rate less them) On the other hand the four large north Indian states (Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh) with a persistently high level of fertility shows progress in the field of female literacy. This is a rather strange scenario, because Kerala represents a level closer or in the range of developed countries, and on the other hand the north Indian states represent a level closer or sometimes below the sub saharau Africa. In between we have the middle level states like West Bengal with values nearing the national average. However, the case of West Bengal needs to be considered differently. This state have faced several impediments like repeated large scale refugee influx |
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