Women's empowerment and fertility preferences of married women: analysis of demographic and health survey'2016 in Timor-Leste

Nandeeta Samad; Pranta Das; Segufta Dilshad; Hasan Al Banna; Golam Rabbani; Temitayo Eniola Sodunke; Timothy Craig Hardcastle; Ahsanul Haq; Khandaker Anika Afroz; Rahnuma Ahmad; Mainul Haque

doi:10.3934/publichealth.2022017

Women's empowerment and fertility preferences of married women: analysis of demographic and health survey'2016 in Timor-Leste

AIMS Public Health. 2022 Jan 12;9(2):237-261. doi: 10.3934/publichealth.2022017. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Public Health, North South University, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
² Department of Statistics, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
³ Institute of Social Welfare and Research, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
⁴ Health Systems and Population Studies Division, International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), Dhaka, Bangladesh.
⁵ Department of Anatomy, University of Ilorin, Nigeria.
⁶ Department of Surgery, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
⁷ Gonoshasthaya-RNA Molecular Diagnostic & Research Center, Dhanmondi, Dhaka-1205, Bangladesh.
⁸ Deputy Manager (Former), Monitoring, Learning, and Evaluation, CEP, BRAC, Bangladesh.
⁹ Department of Physiology, Medical College for Women and Hospital, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
¹⁰ Unit of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine and Defence Health, Universiti Pertahanan Nasional Malaysia (National Defence University of Malaysia), Kem Perdana Sugai Besi, 57000 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Abstract

A recently independent state, Timor-Leste, is progressing towards socioeconomic development, prioritizing women empowerment while its increased fertility rate (4.1) could hinder the growth due to an uncontrolled population. Currently, limited evidence shows that indicators of women's empowerment are associated with fertility preferences and rates. The objective of this study was to assess the association between women empowerment and fertility preferences of married women aged 15 to 49 years in Timor-Leste using nationally representative survey data. The study was conducted using the data of the latest Timor-Leste Demographic and Health Survey 2016. The study included 4040 rural residents and 1810 urban residents of Timor-Leste. Multinomial logistic regression has been performed to assess the strength of association between the exposures indicating women's empowerment and outcome (fertility preference). After adjusting the selected covariates, the findings showed that exposures that indicate women empowerment in DHS, namely, the employment status of women, house and land ownership, ownership of the mobile phone, and independent bank account status, contraceptive use, and the attitude of women towards negotiating sexual relations are significantly associated with fertility preferences. The study shows higher the level of education, the less likely were the women to want more children, and unemployed women were with a higher number of children. Our study also found that the attitude of violence of spouses significantly influenced women's reproductive choice. However, employment had no significant correlation with decision-making opportunities and contraceptive selection due to a lack of substantial data. Also, no meaningful data was available regarding decision-making and fertility preferences. Our findings suggest that women's empowerment governs decision-making in fertility preferences, causing a decline in the fertility rate.

Keywords: Timor-Leste; enablement; fertility preference; fertility rate; frequency; predilection; women's empowerment.