Decision making powers of women in household affairs: A case study of Kirtipur Municipality, Kathmandu

Abstract

The present study Decision Making Powers of Women in Household Affairs: A Case Study of Kirtipur Municipality, Kathmandu District, is based on primary information collected from field survey. This study demonstrates decision making power and find out constraint and opportunities of women with comparative to their male counter partner with the household using descriptive and explanatory research design. The main objective of this study is to study the socio-economic characteristics of women of Kirtipur Municipality and to identify the factors affecting women’s decision making in household affairs of the study area. In this context, this is a case study of Kirtipur Municipality. In order to fulfill the objectives, 100 women in the study area were selected and data was collected using interview schedule and government records were used as secondary source, and analysis was done using descriptive statistics. This study has analyzed the socio-economic status of women of Kirtipur Municipality. Moreover, it has highlighted the status of respondent’s children education, household medical expenditures as well as personal expenses. The main outcome of this study is centered about the decision-making power of women. Women have more decision-making power in the matter of caring of children and other family members, but have low decision-making power in monetary issues such as keeping of household incomes, giving and taking loan and education expenditure. Furthermore, in low expenditure matters such as groceries, personal expenses and medical treatment both men and female jointly make decisions. The study concludes that women are deprived from the decision on specific economic issues while male members are dominating the family. Educational and economic status are two major factors that affects the decision-making power of women. Therefore, we should extremely emancipate the women to raise their status as well as the nations with proper polices and programmers.