- Name
- Proportion of women (aged 15-49) who make their own informed decisions regarding sexual relations, contraceptive use and reproductive health care
- Indicator purpose
- The purpose of this indicator is to measure the share of women who make their own decision regarding seeking contraceptive use and reproductive healthcare.
- Abstract
- Proportion of women aged 15-49 years (married or in union) who make their own decision on all three selected areas i.e. can say no to sexual intercourse with their husband or partner if they do not want; decide on use of contraception; and decide on their own health care. Only women who provide a “yes” answer to all three components are considered as women who “make her own decisions regarding sexual and reproductive”.
- Contact organization / person
- Sustainable Development Unit
- Unit of measure
- Percentage (%)
- Other characteristics
- A woman is considered to have autonomy in reproductive health decision making and to be empowered to exercise their reproductive rights if they can say “NO’ to sex with their husband/partner if they do not want to, decide on use/ non-use of contraception and decide on health care for themselves.
- Classification used
- Women’s and girls’ autonomy in decision making over consensual sexual relations, contraceptive use and access to sexual and reproductive health services is key to their empowerment and the full exercise of their reproductive rights.
A woman’s ability to say “no” to her husband/partner if she does not want to have sexual intercourse is well aligned with the concept of sexual autonomy and women’s empowerment.
Regarding decision-making on use of contraception, the expert views as well as the initial data charts for several countries indicated that a clearer understanding of women empowerment is obtained by looking at the indicator from the perspective of decisions being made “mainly by the partner”, as opposed to decision being made “by the woman alone” or “by the woman jointly with the partner”. Depending in the type of contraceptive method being used, a decision by the woman “alone” or “jointly with the partner” does not always entail that the woman is empowered or has bargaining skills. Conversely, it is safe to assume that a woman that does not participate, at all, in making contraceptive choices is disempowered as far as sexual and reproductive decisions are concerned.
Women who make their own decision regarding seeking healthcare for themselves are considered empowered to exercise their reproductive rights.
A union involves a man and a woman regularly cohabiting in a marriage-like relationship.
- Disaggregation
- Based on available DHS data, disaggregation is possible by age, geographic location, place of residence, education, and wealth quintile.
- Key statistical concepts
- This indicator can be calculated using the following formula:
Proportion = ((Number of married or in union women aged 15-49 years old NO) / (Total number women aged 15-49 years old, who are married or in union)) * 100.
- Recommended uses
- This indicator can be used to measure the proportion of women aged 15-49 years (married or in union) who make their own decision.
- Other comments
- All the metadata shown in this document was gathered from United Nation Statistics Division. The metadata was extracted from https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/.
- Target 2030
- 6. Ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights as agreed in accordance with the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the Beijing Platform for Action and the outcome documents of their review conferences
