1. Measuring Women's Autonomy in Chad Using the Relative Autonomy Index.
- Author
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Vaz, Ana, Pratley, Pierre, and Alkire, Sabina
- Subjects
- *
SOCIAL conditions of women , *POLITICAL autonomy , *GENDER & society , *EQUALITY , *MOTIVATION (Psychology) , *SOCIAL pressure - Abstract
Increasing women's voice and agency is widely recognized as a key strategy to reduce gender inequalities and improve health outcomes. Although recent studies have found associations between women's autonomy and a number of health outcomes, fundamental issues regarding adequate measurement of women's autonomy remain. The Relative Autonomy Index (RAI) provides a direct measure of motivational autonomy. It expresses the extent to which a woman faces coercive or internalized social pressure to undertake domain-specific actions. This contribution addresses a key critique of current measures of autonomy, which focus on decision making or ignore women's values. This study examines the measurement properties and added value of a number of domain-specific RAIs using new nationally representative data from the Republic of Chad. A striking finding is that women on average have less autonomous motivation in all eight domains compared to their male counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2016
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