Medicine and Health

Women's Autonomy in Healthcare Services

Introduction

Autonomy is the capability of an individual for obtaining the information and deciding about their personal concerns. It provides facilitation in access to resource like income food and other forms of income and societal resources like power, prestige, knowledge within the community and family (Sharan, et al., 2005).

The autonomy of a woman is extremely significant in healthcare-decision making for improved outcomes of maternal and child health. It is also significant for the empowerment of women. Inequalities of power based on gender may limit the open communication among the partners regarding the reproductive health decision together with access of woman to reproductive healthcare services (Tiwari & Kumar, 2010). In result, this may act as a contributor too consequences of poor health. Facts of several countries exhibit that the age of a woman and the structure of the family is the powerful determinants of authority of a woman in making decisions. In this paper we will discuss the women's autonomy related to women's healthcare. Moreover, we will discuss some conflicts that are raised from ideal and actual conditions defining patient autonomy.

Discussion

The context of socio-culture conditions the association of woman individual level traits to decision making. In this, autonomy is the key dominant mediator among the status of woman and outcome of reproduction. In several cultures, women are given less autonomy to obtain an improved comprehension of the determinants of their autonomy of decisions making. In previous studies, it has been observed that women who had considerable say in matters of reproduction were more likely to have good educational background and those women use to spend more time in household financing practices and those women were married in old ages (Sharan, et al., 2005).

Autonomy of Woman

According to the analysis of studies, anatomy of women contains following factors:

It is the right of the woman that she is conveyed with appropriate information.

The power of woman as a patient has been raised

The healthcare system should be restructured to make sure that their autonomy is protected.

It is the autonomy f the woman to make decision about the reproductive practices like abortions or genetic engineering.

In the previous studies, it has been highlighted that ethnicity is a key role player in significant role in shaping the decision making authority of a wife. The level of autonomy of a woman is also dependant on the fact the whether husband or wife are respondents as it seem that response classes do not contain similar semantic or cognitive meanings for women and men. Restriction to physical, sexual, social, economic and political autonomy also have significant affect on the process of women decision making (Sharan, et al., 2005).

In the article it has been discussed that the argument of Sherwin critique about the quality of resent health care decision making is related to the fact that in action, the consent process generally falls short of securing patient autonomy. Patients may have access to agencies and the opportunities to decide with informed consent however, they do ...