Rural Woman’s Autonomy in Decision Making at Household Level: An empirical study on Karnataka

Abstract

Women decision making is giving legitimate power or authority to perform the tasks. If women were free to take their own decisions, they would be able to participate in the planning and decision making task and contribute to the development programmes and activities individually. The process of freedom of decision making should start from our own home. Women’s position in the household determines women’s autonomy in the family. It is worth to examine whether she can decide about household matters like buying household assets and jewelleries, having access to money, having mobility to go to relatives’ house or getting health care facilities. Present study evaluates the perception of females with respect to their freedom of decision making at household front. This paper also explains how the freedom of decision making of females at household level is influenced by various other factors and their contribution in decision making freedom to the women. The present study was undertaken in the Dharwad district based at Karnataka state and it reflects various dimensions of women decision making at household level.