Gender preference and perception of PNDT: A community based study among ever married women in a rural area of West Bengal

Background: Declining sex ratio is an issue of major concern. In spite of legal rules and regulations prenatal sex determination and sex selective abortion is going on in this country. The root of the problem is male child preference and unawareness about the rules forbidding prenatal sex determination. Aim: To elicit the gender preference and perception regarding prenatal sex determination among rural ever married women and to find out the contextual factors influencing the perception. Material and methods: This community based cross-sectional study was undertaken under the rural field practice area of All India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health, Kolkata. All ever married women in that area was line listed out of which the required number of women (i.e. 96) was selected by simple random sampling. A predesigned and pretested semi structured schedule was used for data collection. Firstly a univariate analysis was done. The variables which were found to be significant were entered into the multiple logistic regression model. P value of <0.05 was considered significant. Results: 90.6% of the study population felt that at least one male child is necessary in a family and 59.37% agreed with prenatal sex determination. Multivariate analysis showed that women with higher education had better perception of prenatal sex determination techniques and the PNDT Act with Adjusted Odds Ratio (Confidence Interval) 19.25 (5.58-66.34). Conclusion: Intensive IEC campaigns to increase awareness and enforcement of law are the need of the hour to check this social problem.