Women's program impact on village women's contraceptive and reproductive behavior in rural Bangladesh.

Abstract

The author examines the impact on contraceptive and reproductive behavior of a social program designed to teach trade skills and family planning to women in rural Bangladesh. The focus is on "whether a social program that is designed to use a particular group as catalysts brings about any change in [the] contraceptive and reproductive behaviour of the community that is indirectly exposed to the program." A sample of 625 women indirectly exposed to the program and 312 women from non-program, control villages were interviewed; baseline data are from the 1976 Bangladesh Fertility Survey. It is found that "the indirectly exposed and unexposed women are very similar in their contraceptive and reproductive behaviour. The impact of the directly exposed women (trained women) in family planning was trivial even after three years of program operation. Socio-economic and demographic characteristics of both the groups are also similar....The current use among the indirectly exposed women was only 12% as compared to 10% for the unexposed women."