Married Youth and Their Mothers: Do Empowered Mothers Foster Gender-Equitable Relationships and Better Reproductive Health among Young People in Rural Bangladesh?

Sidney Ruth Schuler, Center for Applied Behavioral and Evaluation Research
Lisa M. Bates, Harvard University
Farzana Islam, Jahangirnagar University
Md. Khairul Islam, Plan International

This study combines qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate the effects of women's empowerment on the timing of their children's marriages and initiation of childbearing, and on their children's marital relationships. The research sites are 6 villages where the authors have been working since 1991. In the paper we test several specific hypotheses, including the following: daughters of empowered women are likely to marry later than other women, and sons are less likely to marry girls under the legal minimum age at marriage; sons of empowered women are less likely than other men their age to use physical violence against their wives, and more likely to believe that a married woman has the right to refuse her husband when she does not wish to engage in sex; and young married women with empowered mothers-in-law are more likely to have greater freedom of movement.