Abstract
Although ICPD brought about an international consensus on the centrality of women’s empowerment and gender equity as desired national goals, the conceptualization and measurement of empowerment in demography and economics have been largely understood in a relational and in a family welfare context where women’s altruistic behaviour within the household is tied either to developmental or child health outcomes. The goals of this study were twofold: (1) to offer an empirical examination of the household level empowerment measure through the theoretical construct of self-compassion and investigate its association with antenatal health, and (2) to ensure robust psychometric quality for this new measure. Drawing data from the nationally representative, multi-topic dataset of 42, 152 households, India Human Development Survey, IHDS II (2011–2012), the study performed a confirmatory factor analysis followed by an OLS estimation to investigate the association between a self-compassionate based empowerment and antenatal care. Empowerment was shown to be positively and significantly associated with antenatal care with significant age and education gradient. A woman’s married status, her relation to the household head and joint family residence created conditions of restricted freedom in terms of her mobility, decision making and sociality. The empowerment measure showed inconsistent associations with social group affiliations and household wealth. The study provided an intellectual starting point to rethink the traditional formulations of empowerment by foregrounding its empirical measure within the relatively unexplored area of social psychology. In the process it addressed measurement gaps in the empowerment-health debate in India and beyond.
Highlights
While the International Conference on Population & Development (ICPD) [1] brought about an international consensus on the centrality of empowerment and gender equity as desired national goals, the conceptualization and measurement of empowerment in demography and economics have been largely understood in a relational and in a family welfare context where women’s altruistic behaviour within the household is tied either to developmental or child health outcomes
This study proposed to offer an alternative definition of the household level empowerment measure by including dimensions of self-compassion: a non-judgmental attitude towards one’s own self that includes feelings of awareness, recognition and assertiveness; since research has demonstrated that self-compassion has strong positive association with personal empowerment which in turn generates health gains
The means comparisons confirmed pervious scholarship on the gains that a woman typically makes in empowerment when located in an urban area or belonging to an Hindu household or being older when compared to a woman residing in a rural area, belonging to a Muslim household or being at the bottom of the age hierarchy within the household
Summary
While the International Conference on Population & Development (ICPD) [1] brought about an international consensus on the centrality of (women’s) empowerment and gender equity as desired national goals, the conceptualization and measurement of empowerment in demography and economics have been largely understood in a relational and in a family welfare context where women’s altruistic behaviour (or domestic duty) within the household (e.g. decisions on cooking, household ration, etc.) is tied either to developmental or child health outcomes. By shifting the empirical gaze to woman’s self-efficacy related constructs, the current paper builds on and contributes to the scarce body of scholarship that goes beyond the empowerment-development paradigm. Given this intellectual and policy background, this study asked if empowerment can be understood in relation to one’s own health and wellbeing. This study proposed to offer an alternative definition of the household level empowerment measure by including dimensions of self-compassion: a non-judgmental attitude towards one’s own self that includes feelings of awareness, recognition and assertiveness; since research has demonstrated that self-compassion has strong positive association with personal empowerment which in turn generates health gains
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