To assess the knowledge attitude and practices regarding women empowerment and its impact on health status of women in rural and urban areas attached with Govt. Medical College, Patiala, Punjab

To assess the knowledge attitude and practices regarding women empowerment and its impact on health status of women in rural and urban areas attached with Govt. Medical College, Patiala, Punjab Singh G.1, Mitra Y.2*, Kaur S.3, Singh Balgir R.4 DOI: https://doi.org/10.17511/ijphr.2019.i2.06 1 Gurmeet Singh, Professor, Government Medical College, Patiala, Punjab, India. 2* Yash Mitra, Assistant Professor, Department of Community Medicine, Punjab Institute of Medical Sciences, Jalandhar, Punjab, India. 3 Sukhwinder Kaur, Nodal Officer O/o DHS, Chandigarh, Punjab, India. 4 Rajinder Singh Balgir, Professor (Ex), Department of Community Medicine, Government Medical College, Patiala, Punjab, India.


Introduction
Women's empowerment, or autonomy, is a multifaceted concept. In a patriarchal society, as exists in large parts of India, men are placed in a more advantageous position than women. The family lineage and living arrangements are centered on men, and inheritance and succession practices tend to neglect women as well.
The state of male supremacy is reflected in the child rearing and caring practices, the celebrations for the birth of a male child and the differential treatment

Objectives
To study the knowledge, attitude and practices regarding women empowerment and its impact on the health status of women in rural and urban areas of district Patiala.

Setting and Type of Study:
The study was carried out in Rural (CHC Bhadson) and Urban MCH (Center Tripuri). It is cross-sectional study. Inclusion Criteria: Those women who were married from age group 18-49 years and submitted written consent to participate in the study included.
Exclusion Criteria: those married females were excluded from the study who were not fulfilling the above criteria and refused to submit the written consent for the study.
Statistical Methods: were used to collect so and analysis the data.

Ethical Consideration and Permission:
The permission was obtained from the Institutional Ethical Committee.

Results
The major findings of the study are as below:              Table 7 reveals that status of empowerment in the rural as well as urban women is better among those who are employed.  What this study adds to the Existing Knowledge There are problems of knowledge, attitude and practices regarding existing education system, legal age of marriage, partial family welfare services, MMR, IMR, infanticide and foeticide, Honour killings.
Therefore following steps by the health department in particular and in general the Govt. and community must share the responsibility to empower the women by implementing and enforcing following steps to change the worst scenario existing in rural areas of Punjab and even the slums of urban areas of Punjab:

Singh G. et al: To assess the knowledge attitude and practices
Literacy rate is to be enhanced.
The health and family welfare department should start a campaign in the sub-urban, urban and rural areas to educate the population regarding legal age of marriage, to provide family welfare services in addition to the health services.
The activities of health and family welfare department will lead to decrease in various morbidity and mortality (MMR, IMR, infanticide, foeticide) rates. It is further recommended that the campaign by the health and family welfare department should be a continuous process to sustain and enhance the health status of the women in the family.
The community leaders as well as the Government authorities should have a vigorous campaign of education and counseling against honour killings in the community.
The attitudes or opinions of the women in a family are definitely influenced by the better empowerment status of the women so it is recommended that provision of education, employment and improving their socio economic status by the Government and responsibilities of families will lead to better health status and modification in the overall health scenario of the family, community, state as well as the country.  [Crossref] 02. Kirsten Stoebenau and Anju Malhotra. Has Fertility Decline Contributed to Improvements in Women's Lives?. The International Center for Research on Women (ICRW). Nov;2011. [Crossref] 03. World Health Organization (WHO). Health and Development in the 20th Century. Geneva-WHO. 1999. [Crossref] 04. Commission on Status of Women. Review of the implementation of the Beijing declaration and plan for action, the outcomes of the twenty third special session of the General Assembly and its contribution to shaping a gender perspective towards the full realization of millennium Development Goals. United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). 2009. [Crossref] 05. Closing the gap in a generation. Health equity through action on the social determinants of health. WHO, Geneva. 2008. [Crossref]