Answer:
The ability to decide freely the number, spacing and timing of one’s children is a basic human right, endorsed at the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994 (United Nations Population Fund, 1994). Family planning programmes are associated with lower fertility and lower maternal mortality (Cleland et al., 2006). Through family planning programmes, women gain access to contraceptives, increasing the likelihood that they can achieve their desired family size. Yet, despite the well-documented benefits of family planning, an estimated 40% of pregnancies are unintended (Sedgh et al., 2014) and unmet need for contraception remains high despite increased availability of methods (Cleland et al., 2014). Persistent barriers to contraceptive use and related behaviours underscore the need to expand the understanding of, and improve efforts to address, structural drivers of contraceptive use, such as women’s empowerment.
Previous research on women’s empowerment points to its pivotal role in influencing reproductive health behaviours, though there is wide variation in results (Abadian, 1996; Blanc, 2001; Malhotra et al., 2002; Kishor & Subaiya, 2008). A more recent review of women’s empowerment and fertility shows that women’s empowerment is associated with lower fertility, longer birth intervals and lower rates of unintended pregnancy (Upadhyay et al., 2014).
