Women’s Empowerment in Decision Making and its Determinants on Contraceptives in Ethiopia: Insights from EDHS

Abstract

Enhancing women's empowerment in decision-making is an important factor in securing a sustained life. Sustainable Development Goal (SDG-5) hereby addresses this issue with equal access to all and their representation in decision-making. Women's empowerment, the decision to use, and the decision not to use contraceptives are interrelated. But, there is limited research on the influence of women’s empowerment on contraceptive use. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the role of women’s decision-making empowerment in contraceptive use among reproductive-age women in Ethiopia, using data from the 2016 Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey. The analysis included descriptive analysis, correlation analysis, binary logistic regression, and multinomial logistic regression. Out of the total women surveyed, only 34.12% reported using contraception, indicating that 65.88% are not using it. The logit model indicates that husband age & education, wealth, regional variation, religions, access to advice, access to information, and distance to health facilities are statistically significant in influencing the usage of contraceptives. Only 24% and 30% of women have decided to use, and not-to-use contraceptives respectively, without the influences of their husbands, joint and community influences. The multinomial logit model on decision to use also confirms that husband age, regional variation, and information access are statistically significant to explain women decision to use contraceptive. However, husband desire of children, place of residence (rural), women education and age are statistically significant in explaining women decision not to use contraceptives. The findings suggest that raising education level, household wealth, distance to health facilities, access to information and advice should be prioritized.