Women’s empowerment is considered to play a crucial role in food and nutrition security. We aimed to explore the relationship between women’s empowerment and food and nutrition security, in rural ...Pakistan. Methods: To estimate women’s empowerment, we developed a Rural Women Composite Empowerment Index incorporating nine domains. For indicators of food and nutritional data we used data of 1879 rural households from Pakistan Rural Household Panel Survey (PRHPS). Food insecurity was measured through a caloric intake approach; nutrition insecurity was measured through recommended nutrient intake (RNI). Using the Rural Women’s Composite Empowerment Index (RWCEI), we employed multi-level mixed-effect regression analysis. Results: The domains of traveling safely (21%), time allocated to tasks (20%), and (lack of) domestic violence (19%) were the most significant domains in defining empowerment of rural woman. The prevalence of food and nutrition insecurity were 33% and 50% respectively. Regression analysis found a positive and significant relationship between women’s empowerment and food and nutrition security–the proportion of household who were food and nutritionally secure in empowered households was 70% and 98% respectively. Conclusions: Developing programmes and policies to improve the range of domains of women’s empowerment requires a focussed policy agenda, bringing together policy makers from a number of different sectors including education, economy, communications, technology and agriculture. Women’s empowerment has the potential to make positive changes not only in food and nutrition security, but in all aspects of family health and wellbeing.
Theological beliefs play an important role in cultural norms and could impact women's prenatal and postpartum decisions in South Asia, which has a high burden of disease in children and pregnant ...women. The aim of this study is to identify any associations religion may have in affecting a woman's decision-making ability, and how that in turn affects maternal and child health, at a group level in multiple South Asian countries. Cross-sectional study utilizing secondary data analysis. We used Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) between 2014 and 2018 in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan. Not every country's survey asked about religion, so we imputed these results based on Census data. We assessed maternal and child health through a composite coverage index (CCI), which accounts for family planning, attendance of a skilled attendant at birth, antenatal care, BCG vaccinations, 3 doses of diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine, measles vaccine, oral rehydration therapy, and seeking care if the child has pneumonia. The relationship between religion, women's empowerment, and CCI was assessed through linear regression models. The sample included 57,972 mothers who had children aged 12-23 months. CCI is observed to be affected by family income, in addition to religion and country. CCI was higher in Hindus (2.8%, 95% CI: 2.4%, 3.1%) and Buddhists (2.0%, 95% CI: 1.2%, 2.9%) than Muslims. Mother's age, education, income, decision-making autonomy, and attitude towards beatings were all related to CCI. In a model stratified by religion, age, education, and income were significant predictors of CCI for both Muslims and non-Muslims, but were more impactful among Muslims. Though multiple imputation had to be used to fill in gaps in religion data, this study demonstrates that maternal and child health outcomes continue to be a concern in South Asia, especially for Muslim women. Given the importance of religious beliefs, utilizing a simple indicator, such as the CCI could be helpful for monitoring these outcomes and provides a tangible first step for communities to address gaps in care resulting from disparities in maternal empowerment.
Urbanization in low and middle-income nations is characterized by economic and demographic shifts largely understood to be beneficial to women’s empowerment. These changes include increased education ...and wage-labor opportunities, a disruption of traditional patrilocal residence systems, and reductions in spousal age gap and fertility. However, such changes may drive a “violence backlash,” with men increasing intimate partner violence (IPV) in efforts to challenge women’s shifting status. To date, tests of this idea primarily relate to women’s changing economic status, with less known about the demographic correlates of IPV in urbanizing settings. Addressing this, we conducted a cross-sectional study of IPV behavior and attitudes in an urbanizing community in Mwanza, northern Tanzania (n = 317). Consistent with a violence backlash, IPV was reported more often among women educated at higher levels than their husband, and women earning similar, rather than lower, wages to their husband were more likely to report that he condones IPV. These findings were independent of women’s absolute education and income. Furthermore, less frequent paternal kin contact, and relatively small spousal age gaps, generally understood to boost women’s empowerment, were associated with an increased risk of experiencing IPV. Less frequent paternal kin contact was also associated with an increased likelihood that a husband condones IPV. Contrary to our predictions, relatively lower fertility, generally linked to higher women’s empowerment, did not predict IPV behavior and women with high, rather than low, fertility were more likely to report that their husband condones IPV. Overall, our results support the notion of a violence backlash corresponding to economic changes for women that accompany urbanization. In contrast, demographic changes associated with urbanization have more variable relationships. Drawing on these results, we suggest future research avenues for better understanding the vulnerability of women to IPV in urbanizing settings.
Al resolver la acción de inconstitucionalidad 148/2017, la Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación analizó la constitucionalidad de algunos artículos del Código Penal del Estado de Coahuila de ...Zaragoza, que regulan el delito de aborto. La Corte decidió que algunas de las normas que fueron impugnadas son contrarias a diversos derechos de las mujeres y personas gestantes, entre ellos el derecho a decidir, a la dignidad humana y a la igualdad, al criminalizarles por interrumpir el embarazo, motivo por el cual decidió invalidarlas. Al resolver este asunto, la corte sentó un precedente funcional para todo el país que, por primera vez, reconoce una prohibición de criminalización de las mujeres y las personas con capacidad de gestar que decidan interrumpir un embarazo.
In May 2018, the Irish electorate voted to remove from the Constitution one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the world. This referendum followed 35 years of legal cases, human rights ...advocacy, feminist activism and governmental and parliamentary processes. The reframing of abortion as an issue of women's health rather than foetal rights was crucial to the success of law reform efforts. The new law, enacted in 2018, provides for access to abortion on a woman's request up to 12 weeks of pregnancy and in situations of risk to the life or of serious harm to the health of the pregnant woman and fatal foetal anomaly thereafter. Abortion is now broadly accessible in Ireland; however, continued advocacy is needed to ensure that the state meets international human rights standards and that access to abortion care and abortion rights is fully secured within the law.
•Framing abortion as a women's health issue was important for successful law reform.•Human rights advocacy was critical in maintaining political pressure for law reform.•Healthcare providers had a significant influence on public opinion and politicians.•Abortion care is now broadly accessible in Ireland, although challenges remain.•Data collection will be crucial to inform further legal and policy reforms.•Law reform was the result of many years of advocacy, and of a range of advocacy strategies.
The "new middle class" as a political construct is valuable for feminist theorizations of international political economy, particularly those concerned with development. The rise of the new middle ...class is usually juxtaposed with neoliberalism, so we offer a new theorization of neoliberalism-as-event and analyze an array of new-middle-class signs and subjects in India. Questioning the repetition of the figure of the new Indian woman in resolving the sociotemporal and spatiotemporal paradoxes of the nation, we argue, first, that the figure of the subaltern woman is a necessary counter to the new Indian woman. The arrival of the gendered subaltern on the national stage is celebrated through discourses that articulate and disarticulate the subaltern woman and bear the traces of subaltern struggles. Her gendered body constitutes the line between who can be new middle class and at the vanguard of neoliberal development and who cannot. Second, we argue that new-middle-class formation is taking place in the households of diasporic returnees through class practices that involve speaking to and for domestic servants. Returnees hold in tension urges to encourage class mobility and to discipline their servants through neoliberal governmentalities that draw on global discourses of corporate responsibility, professionalism, and empowerment. These development scripts are interspersed with reflections on the poor material conditions of domestic service work. The implications of this article for feminist theorizations of international political economy are methodological, analytical, and political.
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