Bargaining power within couples and use of prenatal and delivery care in Indonesia

Type Journal Article - Studies in family planning
Title Bargaining power within couples and use of prenatal and delivery care in Indonesia
Author(s)
Volume 32
Issue 2
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2001
Page numbers 130-146
URL http://escholarship.org/uc/item/180736vt.pdf
Abstract
Indonesian women's power relative to that of their husbands is examined to determine how it affects use of prenatal and delivery care. Holding household resources constant, a woman's control over economic resources affects the couple's decisionmaking. Compared with a woman with no assets that she perceives as being her own, a woman with some share of household assets influences reproductive health decisions. Evidence suggests that her influence on service use also varies if a woman is better educated than her husband, comes from a background of higher social status than her husband's, or if her father is better educated than her father-in-law. Therefore, both economic and social dimensions of the distribution of power between spouses influence use of services, and conceptualizing power as multidimensional is useful for understanding couples' behavior.

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