Empoderamento e fecundidade: uma análise regional e por coorte das mulheres equatorianas em 2004

Abstract

Since the seventies Ecuador has experimented a decline in fertility that has decelerated last years. Women without education have the highest levels of fertility while women that belong to fifth economic quintil show the lowest levels of fertility.In the last decades, there was important progress in terms of gender equity in Ecuador. Important legal framework that benefit the exercise of the politic, economic, sexual and reproductive rights laws, were promulgated, however gender inequities persist in Ecuadorian society.Various authors state that demographic processes can be better understood if it includes gender relationships analysis. This research shows the association between the empowerment dimensions and fertility in Ecuador, in 2004. Two cohorts of women in reproductive age were established. For each cohort and for each countrys province, a relation between fertility levels and the representative variables of the each empowerment dimensions were analyzed. The method used was Correspondence Analysis. The access of knowledge, measured using education, and the womens economic resources control are the empowerment dimensions that have the higher frequencies in the association with the fertility levels in the provincies. A life free of violence is the dimension that show the lower number of associations with fertility in the Ecuador provincies. This results are presented for each cohort.The source of data was the Encuesta Demográfica de Salud Materna e Infantil, ENDEMAIN of 2004.