Age Empowers Women at Home: Findings from Rural Haryana Kalaiselvi S.*, Krishnan A.**, Gupta S.***, Pandav CS.**** *Senior Resident, Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, Jawaharlal Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER), Puducherry, India **Additional Professor, Centre for Community Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India ***Professor, Centre for Community Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India ****Head of the Department, Centre for Community Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India Online published on 7 May, 2014. Abstract Involvement in household decision making is considered as a proxy measure to measure women empowerment. In Indian cultural context, whether women get more empowered in older age is less explored. We measured gender differentials in household decision making process among married adults (25–45 years) and elderly (>=60 years) of different socio economic groups to test the hypothesis that women get empowered as age advances. All adults and elderly from 200 households of four villages in Haryana selected by multi stage sampling were enrolled. Decision making power on issues ranging from (grand) children's marriage, contraception, health care seeking and food menu were covered. Total decision making score ranged from 0–8. Caste, poverty, education were studied to assess socio economic status. The mean decision making score for women increased from 3.8 in 25–35 years of age to 5.0 by 70 yrs of age, while for men it decreased from 4.9 to 3.7. By both caste and spouse education, elderly couples from disadvantaged circumstances showed less gender differentials as compared to those from advantaged group or from adult group. The power of women seems to increase as they age whereas for the men it decreases. This has implications for targeting public health interventions. Top Keywords Decision making, gender differentials, inter-generation gender differentials, elderly, women empowerment, elderly. Top |