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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Contents Vol 8(1)

‘If your husband calls, you have to go’: understanding sexual agency among young married women in urban South India

Rohini Prabha Pande A G , Tina Y. Falle B , Sujit Rathod C , Jeffrey Edmeades D and Suneeta Krishnan E F
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A 7118 Willow Avenue, Takoma Park, MD 20912, USA.

B Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), PO Box 3297, Code 1250, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

C Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of California-Berkeley, School of Public Health, 101 Haviland Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.

D International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), 1120 20th Street NW, Ste. 500 N, Washington, DC 20036, USA.

E Women’s Global Health Imperative, RTI International, 114 Sansome Street, Suite 500, San Francisco, CA 94104, USA.

F Centre for Public Policy, Indian Institute of Management Bengaluru, Bannerghatta Road, Bilekahalli, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560076, India.

G Corresponding author. Email: rohinipande@jhu.edu

Sexual Health 8(1) 102-109 https://doi.org/10.1071/SH10025
Submitted: 27 February 2010  Accepted: 20 July 2010   Published: 24 January 2011

Abstract

Background: Early marriage is common in many developing countries, including India. Women who marry early have little power within their marriage, particularly in the sexual domain. Research is limited on women’s ability to control their marital sexual experiences. Methods: We identified factors affecting sexual communication among married women aged 16–25, in Bangalore, India, and how factors associated with sexual communication differed from those influencing non-sexual agency. We ran ordered logit regression models for one outcome of sexual agency (sexual communication, n = 735) and two outcomes of non-sexual agency (fertility control, n = 735, and financial decision-making, n = 728). Results: Sexual communication was more restricted (83 women (11.3%) with high sexual communication) than financial decision-making (183 women (25.1%) with high financial decision-making agency) and fertility control (238 women (32.4%) with high fertility control). Feeling prepared before the first sexual experience was significantly associated with sexual communication (odds ratio (OR) = 1.8; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.13–2.89). Longer marriage duration (OR 2.13; 95% CI = 1.42–3.20) and having worked pre-marriage (OR 1.38; 95% CI = 1.02–1.86) were also significant. Few other measures of women’s resources increased their odds of sexual communication. Education, having children, pre-marital vocational training and marital intimacy were significant for non-sexual outcomes but not sexual communication. Conclusions: Policy-makers seeking to enhance young married women’s sexual communication need to consider providing sex education to young women before they marry. More broadly, interventions designed to increase women’s agency need to be tailored to the type of agency being examined.

Additional keywords: communication, sex education, women’s empowerment.


Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Samraksha and in particular Sanghamitra Iyengaar, for the support and insights provided during the early years of this study; to the Samata Health Study team for their dedication and effort; and to Kalyani Subbiah for her diligence in directing the project. We thank Anju Malhotra, Anne Golla, Margaret Greene, Corinne Rocca and Kalyani Subbiah for their insights and feedback on this manuscript. The project was supported by award R01HD041731 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.


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