Exploring the Socio-Economic and Cultural Norms in Shaping Women’s Role in Decision Making Process

Abstract

Women's participation in household and community decision-making is widely recognized as a fundamental indicator of gender equality, social inclusion, and sustainable development. Despite notable progress in education, employment, and legal rights, women in many developing societies continue to encounter socio-economic and cultural barriers that restrict their influence over decisions concerning household finances, healthcare, education, mobility, employment, and community affairs. This study aims to explore how socio-economic factors and cultural norms shape women's role in the decision-making process. The present study is conducted in Faisalabad City (Ghulam Muhammad Abad and Kaleem Shaheed Colony), on socio-economic and cultural factors that influence decision-making ability of women. One hundred and twenty women were selected for the study to investigate the role of education, income, employment, cultural values, socio-economic differences, structural barriers in influencing women's participation in household and community decision making. Data was collected through Interview schedule and analyzed through SPSS.  Based on the descriptive findings, women have a moderate level of decision-making authority, showing that women are involved in decisions but not completely given freedom of choice. The results of the correlation analysis showed that socio-economic factors are positively correlated with women's decision-making power, cultural norms have significant negative correlation while structural barriers are strongly and negatively connected with women's decision-making power. Socio-economic comparison further showed a moderate positive association suggesting better socio-economic status is linked with greater autonomy of women compared to lower socio-economic status.  Regression analysis also revealed that the proposed model accounts for 67% of the variance of women's decision-making power, indicating that the selected variables have a relatively high percentage of explaining women's decision-making power. In general, it is concluded that the economic opportunities, cultural values and structural influences are found to have a combined effect on decision-making power of women households in Faisalabad. Lack of investment in education, employment and income limits women's active participation in household and community affairs although improvements in these areas can lead to an increase in women's autonomy.