P Shirisha, Bansal Anjali
Department of Humanities & Social Science, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India.
International Institute of Population Sciences, Mumbai, India.
PLOS Glob Public Health. 2022 Jan 5;2(1):e0000134. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgph.0000134. eCollection 2022.
Stunting depicts chronic deprivation and is a huge public health problem in several developing countries. Considering the sociocultural and sociodemographic factors of India, we aimed to examine the relationship between maternal autonomy and stunting among children <35 months. We have used the data from the latest round of National Family health survey conducted in 2015-16. The main exposure variable was women's autonomy which are represented in our study by the four dimensions- decision-making, physical mobility, financial autonomy, attitudes towards domestic violence, the main predictor variable was stunting among children. Chi-square analysis, univariate and multivariable binary logistic regression analysis were performed to find the association of childhood stunting and women's autonomy. The results were reported at 5% level of significance. All the autonomy variables have shown a significant association with child stunting at 5% level of significance. The unadjusted odds of stunting were found to be significant with respect to all the four dimensions of autonomy variables except physical autonomy. However, after adjusting for other explanatory factors attenuated these relationships and made them statistically insignificant except for women's economic autonomy (AOR = 0.91; 95% C.I.-(0.85, 0.98)) which was found to be significantly affecting the child's status of stunting. Our study reinforces that maternal autonomy is a significant predictor of childhood stunting. Hence, we recommend that policy makers, while designing interventions and policies, must address the socioeconomic inequalities at the community level while devising ways to improve women's empowerment. As it has far-reaching consequences on the nutrition status of the upcoming generations.
发育迟缓反映了长期的营养匮乏，并且在几个发展中国家是一个巨大的公共卫生问题。考虑到印度的社会文化和社会人口因素，我们旨在研究35个月以下儿童的母亲自主权与发育迟缓之间的关系。我们使用了2015 - 2016年进行的最新一轮全国家庭健康调查的数据。主要暴露变量是妇女自主权，在我们的研究中由四个维度来体现——决策、身体活动能力、经济自主权、对家庭暴力的态度，主要预测变量是儿童发育迟缓。进行了卡方分析、单变量和多变量二元逻辑回归分析，以找出儿童发育迟缓和妇女自主权之间的关联。结果报告的显著性水平为5%。所有自主权变量在5%的显著性水平上均显示与儿童发育迟缓有显著关联。除身体自主权外，在所有自主权变量的四个维度方面，未调整的发育迟缓几率均具有显著性。然而，在调整了其他解释因素后，这些关系有所减弱，除了妇女的经济自主权（调整后比值比 = 0.91；95%置信区间 - (0.85, 0.98)）外，其他均无统计学显著性，而妇女的经济自主权被发现对儿童发育迟缓状况有显著影响。我们的研究强化了母亲自主权是儿童发育迟缓的一个重要预测因素这一观点。因此，我们建议政策制定者在设计干预措施和政策时，在设计提高妇女赋权的方法时，必须解决社区层面的社会经济不平等问题。因为这对后代的营养状况有着深远影响。
