Assessment of key dimensions and determinants of women’s empowerment in Bangladesh

This study attempts to measure empowerment of women in Bangladesh context using the data extracted from 2011 Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS). Principal component analysis (PCA) is applied to variables pertaining to decision making and justification of physical violence by husband. Based on PCA, indices are constructed to capture two distinct dimensions of women’s empowerment: attitudes towards domestic violence and participation in decision making. All the decision making variables have positive impact on women empowerment index considering the dimension participation in decision making whereas these variables (except decision regarding visits) have relatively low and negative impact on attitudes towards violence. On the contrary, all the variables regarding justification of beaten by husband have significant impact on attitudes towards domestic violence and low impact on decision making dimension of women empowerment. A set of socio-economic factors such as age group, division, level of education, employment status, religion, wealth index, and number of living children, contraceptive use and fertility preference are assessed with a view to identifying key determinants of women empowerment. The results revealed that highly educated women are more likely to protest against physical violence in comparison with illiterate women. Women from Sylhet are less empowered than that of other divisions.