Married Women’s Autonomy and Associated Factors on Modern Contraceptive Use in Adwa Town, Northern Ethiopia

Background: Women’s autonomy of modern contraceptive use means that those women taking, not taking or even stopping using modern contraceptive by their own decision only. Women’s autonomy in health care decision-making is extremely important for better maternal and child health outcomes. Fertility and contraceptive use in developing countries are associated with various markers of socioeconomic status, most prominent of which is women's autonomy. Women in developing countries, including Ethiopia are either under collective decision making with their partners or completely rely on the male partner’s decision on issues that affect their contraceptive use. The objective of this study was to assess the prevalence of married women’s autonomy and associated factors for modern contraceptive use in Adwa town, Tigray Region, North Ethiopia. Methods: A community based cross-sectional study design was conducted from September 7-18, 2012. Three hundred seventy married women were selected using simple random sampling technique. Data were entered, cleaned and analyzed by using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) Version 20.0 (SPSS Illinois, Chicago). Binary descriptive statistics and multiple variable regressions were done. Results: In this study from a total of 370 respondents, 133(35.9%) reported that they had autonomy on modern contraceptive use. Educational status of the women was a strong significant predictor in the women’s autonomy on modern contraceptive use. Moreover, mothers did not know their husband’s attitude towards contraception use (AOR=4.34,95% CI:1.54,12.2), discussed with their husband about the number of children (AOR=0.48,95% CI:0.24,0.96), born two and less children (AOR= 0.14, 95% CI: 0.03, 0.66) and decides their future number of children by themselves (AOR=34.8, 95% CI:12.14,99.7) and by joint decision (AOR=2.5,95% CI:1.04,6.0) were more likely autonomous on modern contraceptive use. Conclusions: The autonomy of married women on modern contraceptive use in this study was low. Having better educational attainment has an input on increase women's autonomy on modern contraceptive use. Women who had power of deciding on the number of child present, number child will have in the future, the number of children born and husband’s attitude toward contraceptive use could influence on autonomy of women on modern contraceptive use.