A CROSS-SECTIONAL RESEARCH TO EVALUATE THE AUTONOMY OF WOMEN (OF REPRODUCTIVE AGE) IN A FAMILY ABOUT USE OF ANTENATAL-CARE SERVICES

Objective: This research endeavours to evaluate the freedom of household women and utilization of gynaecological services they offer being married women of propagative age group. Material and Methods: We conducted this cross-sectional research at Mayo Hospital, Lahore from February August 2017 at Community Medicine Department . Researchers selected two hundred and eighty-nine women as their research population. Results: On the whole, this study explored that womens autonomy was (33.2%) high, (37.8%) medium and at low level it was (29%). The frequency of autonomy was much higher among young women as forty percent utmost autonomy in (20 - 24) years age group as compared to (30 - 35) years who enjoyed (36.7%) prominent autonomy. Educated and uneducated women had an antithetical ratio of autonomy as (42.3%) enjoyed the least autonomy. On the other hand, the women who went to college had astonishingly high autonomy rate that is (61.2%). In terms of the application of parental services, the utilization was poor as (47.1%), fair as (22.8%) and good as (30.1%). Conclusion: Findings of the research showed that all the women who had formal education , whose husbands are educated and have had the job somewhere, having good income and increased number of sons, enjoy high frequency of autonomy, therefore, (1/3) women enjoy high autonomy. Moreover, family agents mistreat around half of the women. The exploitation of antenatal services is absolutely correlated with maternal age, their education, their husbands education, employment of the head of the family , the total number of residing children, number of surviving sons, the total income of the family, and autonomy of the women.