Exploring the Relation Between Women’s Empowerment and Reproductive Independence of Syrian Refugees in Turkey

Abstract

The empowerment of women is a crucial issue for the world and has been one of the major focuses within the development debates for a long time. There are various theoretical approaches and methods to assess women’s empowerment and mostly its relation to other dynamics. The main focus of this study, reproductive independence, is linked to many demographic events. Women’s empowerment and reproductive independence are both substantial issues considering that they both enable women the tempo and the quantum of their fertility including childlessness by choice. However, there are rather few studies on the empowerment of refugees and their reproductive independence in this context. This study explores the relation between women’s empowerment and the reproductive independence of Syrian refugee women in Turkey. 2018 TDHS Syrian migrant sample data is used as the data source. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is conducted to construct a women’s empowerment index with three dimensions using 10 items. Reproductive independence is conceptualized with three components: sexual relations, healthcare decisions and the need for family planning. Descriptive tables are used as well as binary and multinomial logistic regression models to understand the extent of variance explained by women’s empowerment on reproductive independence. Results show that women’s empowerment is significant on sexual relations, healthcare decisions and the overall reproductive independence. In further analysis, two out of three dimensions of women’s empowerment were significant in logistic regression models in explaining the overall reproductive independence.