Women’s autonomy on maternal health care utilization and its associated factors in homa district, western Ethiopia, 2019.

Abstract

Background: Women’s autonomy has been a central concern for researchers and they agree that limited women’s autonomy in Maternal Health Care is the main underlying causes of poor utilization of maternal health care, and associated with high maternal and children morbidity and mortality, low birth weight, and infertility. However, up to our search in Ethiopia little emphasis has been placed on assessing factors associated with women autonomy, despite of its importance in improving maternal well-being. In addition, since mixed method was recommended by researchers as their study limitation this research was fulfilled this gap. Objectives; To assess magnitude of Women’s Autonomy and its Associated Factors on Maternal Health Care utilization in Homa district, west Ethiopia,2019. Methods; A community based cross sectional study with both qualitative and quantitative was employed. Stratified Multistage sampling method was used to select 468 mothers. Collected data were entered into Epi Data version 3.1 and exported to SPSS 21.0 for analysis. Bi-variable and multivariable logistic regression analysis was done to show factors significantly associated with women’s autonomy. Result: This study revealed that 66.2% of women had high autonomy on maternal health care utilization. Women who attended secondary and above education were 3 times more likely exercised high autonomy than women without formal education [AOR=3.2, 95% CI (1.395, 7.4)]. The odds of high autonomy 10 times high among Women from richest family than those from poorest family [AOR= 9.9, (95% CI (4.21, 23.082)]. The odds of having high autonomy 3 times higher among Women who have favourable attitude toward maternal health care have than women with un favourable attitude [AOR=3.3, 95%CI (1.891, 5.893)]. Being urban dwellers [AOR=2.5,95% CI (1.212, 5.046)], delay age at marriage 18 and above [AOR=3.3(1.887, 5.754)], and women’s employment for payment [AOR=3.4, 95%CI (1.840, 6.233)] were more likely exercised high autonomy than their counter parts. Lack of education, lack of income, culture, religion and lack of awareness are factors addressed by qualitative study to supplement quantitative finding. Conclusion and recommendation: This study revealed that majority of women in homa district had high autonomy. Over all the findings of this study imply that Women’s who had formal education, living in households of high wealth status, women’s employ for payment, delay age at marriage 18 and above, being reside in urban and women who have favorable attitude towards maternal health service were exercised high autonomy than their counter parts. So, enhancing economic status of women and household, improving their educational status, delay age at marriage, enhance attitude of women toward maternal health service can promote level of women autonomy