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Population Research and Policy Review 19: 255282, 2000.
2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 255Womens autonomy, womens status and fertility-related behavior
in ZimbabweMICHELLE J. HINDINCarolina Population Center, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USAAbstract. Womens household decision-making autonomy is a potentially important but less
studied indicator of womens ability to control their fertility. Using a DHS sample of 3,701
married black African women from Zimbabwe, I look at women who have no say in major
purchases, whether they should work outside the home, and the number of children. When
men dominated all household decisions, women were less likely to approve of contraceptive
use, discuss their desired number of children with their spouse, report ever use of a modern
method of contraception, and to intend to use contraception in the future. However, womens
decision-making autonomy was not associated with current modern contraceptive use. Women
who had no decision-making autonomy had 0.26 more children than women who had some
autonomy. These autonomy measures provide additional independent explanatory power of
fertility-related behavior net of traditional measures of womens status such as education and
labor force participation.Keywords: Autonomy, contraception, gender, fertilityIntroductionReproduction is a key factor in womens lives, and fertility is inextricably
linked to womens roles in the family and society. Given the centrality of
childbearing in most societies, womens status is often tied to the number of
children that women bear (and, in some settings, the sex of the children). At
the same time, increases in womens education and labor force participation
can enhance womens status vis--vis men, by offering women opportunities
to control their own resources as well as their power to make decisions about
demographic outcomes such as fertility (Riley 1997). However, education
and labor force participation can detract from the amount of time women
devote to childbearing, which in some settings may result in a loss of status
(Mason 1987). As countries move into the global economy, women are attaining higher levels of formal education and entering the workforce in greater
numbers. These changes may alter womens roles in the family and expectations about childbearing. Many studies have examined the relationship of
womens status, measured by womens educational achievement and labor256 MICHELLE J. HINDINforce participation, to fertility behavior. This paper...