Who Decides What to Use? Contraceptive Decisions of Muslim Women in Bangladesh

This systematic literature review investigates contraceptive decision-making among Bangladeshi Muslim women while looking at how households discuss reproductive health, especially birth control, and how gender, power, religion, and socio-economic factors can affect these discussions. It also challenges traditional viewpoints on women's empowerment that focus on limits by examining quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods research conducted between 1975 and 2025. The findings show that there is a substantial rise in contraceptive prevalence from approximately 17% in 1975 to over 60% by the mid-2010s. Still, women's contraceptive choices always remain subject to debate within patriarchal and religious household environments. Drawing on Mahmood's ideas about piety and agency (2005), Kabeer's ideas about empowerment (1999), and Connell's Gender and Power Theory (1987), the analysis brings together feminist and anthropological perspectives to question liberal ideas that equate agency with individual freedom. Women deal with these boundaries by discussing, reinterpreting religious texts, and choosing birth control methods. Also, education, media exposure, and participation in household decision-making are consistently and positively associated with higher adoption rates. The findings explore the importance of understanding contraceptive behaviour as a socially embedded process, with implications for reproductive health research and programmes that seek to engage women's lived moral and relational realities.