WOMEN STATUS AND FERTILITY BEHAVIOUR IN AN AGRICULTURE SOCIETY IN UTTAR PRADESH

In the present paper an attempt has been made to study the women status and its relationship with fertility behaviour in an agricultural society. The study is based on the information collected from 475households distributed over four villages of districts Bulandshahr in western Uttar Pradesh. In the survey, information has been collected from women aged 15-44 years and having at least one child about their perceived value of children, contraceptive use and fertility preferences. The analysis revealed status of women was very poor in respect to their education and involvement in household decision making. Mean children ever born was reported as 3.4 children and it varied from 1.5 births for women aged less than 25 years to 4.6 births for women aged 35 or more. Mean children ever born was 4.4 among illiterate women and it declined to 2.1 to women with education of 10th or higher grade. The analysis shows a strong son preference, among the ideal family size of 3.3 children. On an average a woman wants 2 boys and 1 girl. About 30 per cent women desired to have children in future and among them 68 per cent women wanted next child to be a boy. The multivariate analysis shows that traditional indicators of women status were the predominant predictor variables of fertility behaviour. Overall, analyses show that some factors of women status, like women education, modernity, husband's occupation plays significant role to forestall fertility behaviour, while other factors don't play significant role in defining fertility behaviour in rural agrarian societies.