Disentangling the Links. Women's Empowerment, Violence and Reproductive Health in Mexico

Irene Casique, Universidad Nacional Autonoma De Mexico

The role of women’s empowerment as a factor shaping the prevalence of marital violence and its links with women’s reproductive health remain mostly unexplored in the Mexican research agenda. This paper explores first, the pathways among women’s autonomy, women’s decision making power and the experience of violence and, in the second section, the relationships between marital violence and four adverse reproductive health outcomes: unwanted pregnancies, unwanted sex, miscarriages and sexually transmitted diseases (STD). Logistic regression models were constructed to examine all these relationships. The data used comes from the Mexican National Survey on Reproductive Health 1998 (Encuesta de Salud Reproductiva con Población Derechohabiente, ENSARE 98), conducted among men and women affiliated to the Social Security system. Preliminary regression results show that the prevalence of violence is higher among more empowered women. On the other hand, the likelihood of experiencing unwanted pregnancies, unwanted sex, miscarriages and STD are all significantly higher among abused women.