IMPACT OF WOMEN’S AUTONOMY ON MATERNAL HEALTH CARE UTILIZATION: A CASE STUDY OF REHMAN-POOR UNION DISTRICT ASTORE GILGIT-BALTISTAN

Abstract

The panacea of a healthy society lies upon access and dispensing sophisticated maternal health care facilities to women. In order to shape this strategy the primary area of focus is ensuring autonomy to women especially in some specific circles of life prominently in getting education, control over mobility, control over household income and control over finance. The importance of women’s autonomy and maternal health care can be judged by the fact that prior to the advent of health care facilities the maternal mortality rate was very high among rural societies especially. The following quantitative research is focused on determining the level of women empowerment, its various dimensions in the local context and their direct or indirect impact on the maternal health seeking behavior in the form of maternal health care utilization. This study is conducted keeping in consideration the verity that more than two-thirds of Pakistan’s population of which around 50% is women, live in rural and remote areas of the country with minimal access to quality health service. Moreover the conventional hegemonic patriarchy which challenges the women’s entity in every development phase is also being analyzed in the form of husband’s concern over the wife’s job, his willingness to compel women to attain maternal health care. In order to have a true say and explore the ground reality moreover in order to further explore the hidden issues within this trauma the researcher conducted the following research in a far flung area of Gilgit-Baltistan in Astore Rehmanpur union which comprises of 12 villages. While conducting the research the researcher came across multi-variations in women’s autonomy within a same territory. Interview schedules were opted as tool for the date collection over the entire research. While a random sample of 211 respondents was taken and analyzed the date through latest software SPSS and techniques of statistics.