THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CULTURAL TRADITION FOR CONTRACEPTIVE CHANGE: A STUDY OF RURAL INDIAN WOMEN

This study investigates the question of whether a small family norm can prevail in a society in the absence of overall modernization, using data from a survey of 349 women in a traditional Indian village.The terms "modern" and "modernizing" could be used only in a qualified sense, since behaviour which would be considered modern among village women would not be considered modern in most other cultural contexts. This limited degree of modernization might not be expected to significantly influence fertility and contraceptive behaviour, but it was found that even at this level, traditionalism was an important factor. Desired family size was significantly higher for traditional women than for modern women, at least in the younger age groups, indicating that completed family size will probably be smaller for more modern women. Actual fertility was less clearly related to modernization. Since all women were still in the child-bearing age groups, however, their fertility was largely incomplete.In the area of contraception variations by modernization differences were more pronounced. When methods other than sterilization were considered, favourability and practice increased with modernization. Sterilization, on the other hand, was widely sanctioned in the village and traditional respondents were as favourable towards it as modern women. In the oldest age group a larger percentage of traditional women had been sterilized than of modern women. These results are attributed to differential government efforts which placed almost exclusive emphasis upon sterilization.While there were no insuperable barriers to social change in the community, there was little dedication to altering the women's status. The realization of positive change would require more insightful educational programs and the involvement of village leadership.The meaning of "traditionalism", as it applies to rural Indian women, is clarified in Chapter 1, and used as a basis for the development of a methodology to measure modernization in Chapter 2. After a description of the research setting (Chapter 3) the main relationships between traditionalism, fertility and contraception are examined (Chapters 4-6). The final two chapters focus on the question of social change in rural society and its implications for the status of village women.