Womens status empowerment and reproductive outcomes.

Fertility decline must not be equated with an oversimplistic notion of provision of increased educational attainment and employment opportunities. Successful empowerment of women has entailed also a reduction in womens total work burden such as from domestic tasks access and control over income and access to non-kin support. Social barriers have been found to still exert strong influences regardless of womens advancement educationally in learning "modern ways" of new technology (birth control nutrition oral rehydration therapy or child vaccination). Empowerment of women would be improved through consciousness raising and a focus on womens practical and strategic needs. Organization of womens groups and mobilization of womens use of community and public resources have proven to be very successful strategies for overcoming negative perceptions of self and self worth and thus changing the balance of power between men and women. Conscious social policy could augment consciousness raising by treating women as subjects who can and ought to shape their own destinies. Population policies would be more effective if these notions were advanced concomitantly with encouragement of contraceptive use and smaller families and elimination of legal social and economic constraints on women. Desai and Jain reported in 1992 that womens income-earning work in South India and the impact on child welfare was jeopardized by poverty excessive work burdens and lack of access to basic infrastructure. Womens high status according to Epsteins anthropological studies did not automatically provide autonomy and was determined by their particular roles and positions within a social hierarchy. Only through an understanding of power relations would the gap between status and autonomy be improved. Autonomy in reproductive decisions may be affected directly and indirectly.