Level of Women Empowerment and It’s Determinates in Selected South Asian Countries

Abstract

In most parts of the South Asia, women commonly have less power and empowerment in making decisions. This is associated with her ethnicity, deprivation level, urban/rural classification and education. This study based on these issues tries to find out that, what factors determines level of woman empowerment in the context of India, Nepal and Bangladesh. So, paper tries to estimate the levels and factors affecting women empowerment with a specified hypothesis. The DHS-2006-07 data on currently married women of age 15-49 years has been used for analysis. Empowerment index is generated by principal component analysis into tersely categories. Multinomial logistic regression used to see the effect of socio-economic and demographic factors on women’s empowerment. Results indicate that age, education, media, occupation, marital duration and wealth power are important factors for women by whom a woman gets a position in household and family, older women have more empowered than younger. Empowerment in rural areas is much less visible than in urban. Rural women, as opposed to women in urban settings, face inequality at much higher rates, and in all spheres of life.