Why Does Women's Empowerment In One Generation Not Lead To Later Marriage and Childbearing In The Next?: Qualitative Findings from Bangladesh

In: Journal of comparative family studies, Volume 42, Issue 2, p. 253-265

Abstract

This study uses qualitative data to explore the socio-cultural processes through which women influence two proximate determinants of health and well-being-age at marriage and age at initiation of childbearing-in the next generation, and to investigate social processes that may be undermining women's empowerment and its effects across generations. Open-ended, in-depth interviews were conducted with triads of womenyoung married women, their mothers, and their mothers-in-law-with one of the senior women in each triad having been identified as comparatively empowered based on a set of indicators measured in a prior survey. The findings suggest the cultural meanings and social dynamics of marriage in the context of poverty and vulnerability to economic crisis are persistent constraints to later marriage and childbearing even in families of empowered women who are aware of the risks and disadvantages of early marriage and childbearing. No substantial differences were found between empowered versus unempowered women and their families in the ways that decisions about the timing of marriage and childbearing were made, nor, in general, between mothers versus mothers-in-law.