It Takes Two: Couple Concordance and Women’s Agency in South Asia

The role of women’s agency in improving wellbeing outcomes has been emphasized by a large literature which, in turn, promoted development policies towards reducing gender disparities. For South Asia, a region with high levels of gender inequality, this paper assesses the correlations of women’s agency, a key component in their empowerment, with women’s health and that of their children, and with other outcomes, such as domestic violence. Following the work of Annan et al. (2021) in their analysis of Sub-Saharan Africa, we find that the wife’s influence in the household decision process and the husband’s recognition of that power matter. The spousal agreement variant of agency – when both spouses are joint decision makers and their roles mutually recognized – has stronger beneficial correlations with child vaccination, women being underweight, prenatal care, modern contraception use, and domestic violence than the correlations found for agency variants where the women’s influence on decisions is more contentious. Actively exercising choices, a core element of agency, is often equivalent to effectively navigating relations. Spousal support and the social environment in which these relations occur are especially relevant in South Asia, a region where firm social norms on gender roles are widespread.