1, Definition of women’s empowerment
Since the mid‐1980s, the term empowerment has gained much interest in developing fields.40 Commencing ICPD in Cairo in 1994,6,41 it has been advocated in several conferences that women's empowerment and gender equality play an important role in poverty reduction and better health of women.48,42,43 Definitions of empowerment have spanned a wide range of concepts,44 and thus the measurement requires multidimensional perspectives.5,45-48 For example, ref.51 defined empowerment as a process by which those who have been denied the ability to make strategic life choices acquire such ability, comprising three inter-related dimensions: resources (as pre conditions), agency (as process), and achievements (as outcomes). Then the current mainstream is to
We have two reasons to focus on maternal health care with emphasis on the women’s empowerment in Indonesia. The first is that Indonesia is demographically and geographically unique in South Asia. Specifically, Indonesia is a multiethnic country whose area ranges over 13000 islands, while it is a Muslim-majority country as Bangladesh and Pakistan. Moreover, India and Indonesia are both multiethnic countries, but the central construct is opposite. The Indonesian government adopts a policy to integrate the sense of value and the languages to unify a nation, contrary to India as a mosaic nation. There are studies which have already examined the effect of empowerment or autonomy of women on maternal health outcomes in Asian countries,1-4 such as Bangladesh,5-10 India,11-20 Nepal,21-23 Pakistan24,25 and Philippines.26 However, the status of women’s empowerment is susceptible to cultural and social background.10,27 Therefore, we infer distinctive results would come out in Indonesia compared to other Asian