Extent and Determinants of Decision-Making Power of Wives of Expatriate Workers in the Bangladeshi Family

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Millions of Bangladeshis work as expatriate workers across the globe, but most of the married ones leave their families in their native homes. They live independently or with the parents of their husbands or with their own parents. The study has attempted to understand how the absence of husbands affects their decision-making power in the family. Data were collected using a sample survey of 400 wives of expatriate workers. A composite variable was constructed using 10 statements, which portrayed simple to complex family matters, for measuring the extent of the decision-making of wives during their husbands’ absence and using it as the dependent variable to identify the factors associated with the decision-making power. Descriptive statistics were used for describing the profile of the wives of expatriate workers and determining wives’ level of decision-making power, while inferential statistics were used for identifying the factors associated with decision-making power. Wives were young and literate. The families were poor, mostly landless and joint, and in debt for sending husbands overseas. About 56% of the wives receive remittance and 63% of them control it. Although two-thirds of the wives controlled the remittance, the level of decision-making of wives remained at a moderate level. The regression analysis had shown that a wife had to be a remittance recipient or a remittance controller or an aged woman or any combination of the three to become a decision-maker, in addition to the absence of the husband. The decision-making being a complex interplay of multiple actors in a private home, a direct macro-level policy to empower wives to obtain more decision-making power is difficult to execute and may not be putative in society. Indirect micro-level policies like posting women at remittance transacting desks in banks and financial institutions may encourage more husbands to send remittances to their wives to have their money in safe custody. Since regression analysis has found receiving and controlling remittance have a significant relationship with decision-making power, the more wives receive the remittance, the more likely wives will control it, and thus more wives will be empowered to make decisions.