ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY REGARDING FEMININE REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH: A CASE STUDY OF TWO DISTRICTS OF KP (PAKISTAN)

The serious consequences effecting women community and their health in developing communities like Pakistan are due to male chauvinism (Carr-Saunders.1922).Such behavior pattern has been effecting women reproductive health and reproductive behavior in traditional societies like Pakistan(King,1993). The study is designed to investigate the effect of socio-economic and cultural factors (Zafar et al. 1995) effecting reproductive health of women. The cultural factors are related to gender roles: wife’s participation (Somoro, 2000) in the decision-making process, and the attitude of health providers (Rashid, 2002) are important aspect included in the paper under study. The study was conducted in two randomly selected districts of KP, Peshawar and kohat with the random selection of three communities from each district. A well-structured interviewing schedule consisting of open-ended and close-ended questions was prepared to explore the research objectives and research hypotheses. Fecund women of reproductive age with at least one living child were interviewed. The inferential statistics (Bivariate analysis, Chi-square, Gamma test and co-relational and regression analysis (Sufian, 2001), was used to study the relationship of independent and dependent variables. The study explored the effect of socioeconomic, demographic and cultural determinants of women reproductive health through data collected in real life situation. The study concluded that socioeconomic and cultural values and belief system play pivotal role in explaining human reproductive health behavior. Income does affect the social behavior of the social system. In the study the relationship between family income and family size has been explored.