SOUTHEAST ASIA FERTILITY PROJECT
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MEASUREMENT
Women's Status
The focus here is on the relative balance of women's involvement in traditional
(family and household) versus modern (non-household) roles. To the extent
that a significant proportion of women in the community are active in the
modern sector, there should be some legitimation and freedom to break with
traditional roles, including high fertility. We suggest that much of the
impact of socioeconomic development on fertility is mediated by the structure
of women's roles in and outside the family. This concept consists of two
contextual indicators of women's status at the provincial level: (1) the
proportion of women, aged 15-34, who work in nonagricultural occupations,
and (2) the proportion of women, aged 15-34, who have secondary (or above)
educational attainment. the age boundaries identify women in the peak childbearing
years whose behavior might serve as a model for the normative context of
appropriate fertility behavior.