Factors Influencing Women’s Decision Making Power: Evidence from Bangladesh Urban Health Survey Data

Women empowerment is a pre-requisite of any country’s development and decision making power of women is an indicator of women empowerment. Most of the previous studies of women decision making mainly focused on the influence of women’s decision making on the child health, child mortality, maternal health care, children drop out from school or some other socio-economic matter of women. However there have been a few studies identifying the responsible factors that influence women’s decision making power inside household. But none of the studies focused on urban women’s decision making ability inside household and empowerment. This study makes an attempt to determine the factors affecting decision making power of urban women on six indicators in order to assess their actual situation of empowerment by using the Bangladesh Urban Health Survey data. By the use of six different models for six types of decision making, this study revealed some of the determinants of women empowerment are similar to the previous studies and also discovered a new factor that have significant effect on urban women’s decision making inside household.