Women's Autonomy and Reproductive Behaviour

This book based on the data collected from a sample of 2400 currently married women aged 15 – 29 years, mainly focuses on the differentials and determinants of women's autonomy and its influence on their reproductive behaviour in both rural and urban areas of Tamil Nadu. In this book, women's autonomy is measured in eight different dimensions. The level of women's autonomy on each of these eight dimensions as well as the total autonomy and its correlates are assessed and discussed in detail in the first stage. In the second stage, the impact of women's autonomy on their reproductive behaviour as well as on their knowledge and adoption of family planning methods is assessed. This book will serve as an useful guide to measure the level of women's autonomy in different dimensions. The setting of objectives, methodology followed, data analysis and presentation of results are of immense value. About The Dr. S. Gunasekaran is basically a statistician (M.Sc. Statistics) and had his training in demography (M.Sc. Demography) at the London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London, U.K. He had completed his Ph.D. in Population Studies in the Department of Population Studies at Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati.He has earlier worked in the Population Research Centre (PRC) of the Government of India attached to the Gandhigram Institute of Rural Health and Family Welfare Trust and now he is working as Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Research of the Gandhigram Rural University, Gandhigram, Tamil Nadu, India. Besides teaching Statistics, Demography and Research Methods to the students of both graduate and post-graduate courses, he has also been guiding a number of students for their M.Phil. and Ph.D. He has also been involved in a number of research projects in the field of population, gender, human rights and reproductive health funded by various national and international agencies such as Government of India, Ministry of Health