Gender and population

A large body of evidence has documented the effectiveness of mass media entertainment-education programs in increasing family planning use and changing reproductive behavior. But the potential impact of these programs on the mediating role of gender norms has not been systematically assessed in Nigeria. Baseline and endline representative data collected for the evaluation of a family planning radio serial drama intervention program aired in Northern Nigeria are examined for program effects on both reproductive and gender outcomes. Results show that 70% of the sample listened to the program. On all reproductive outcomes, respondents were more likely at endline than at baseline to report positive changes, especially on behavioural outcomes. Comparison of listeners and non-listeners found positive program impact only on two of these outcomes. The same pattern of effects is seen for the gender outcomes with impact stronger at endline than in listenership. Implications for both sets of outcomes are discussed.

Natural hazards have broad impact on whole community equally, but women folk due to gender inequality and gender differences are more vulnerable and hit harder than men. Present paper attempts to understand women’s vulnerability and their coping mechanism by taking a case of 2008 Kosi flood hit Kursela block of Katihar, Bihar. Data was collected from 115 flood-affected women in 2010 using both Qualitative and quantitative techniques. The flood has completely shattered their lives and livelihood. Women face several problems like family displacement, unavailability of food and drinking water, lack of privacy and sanitation, no communication and above all vulnerability to spread of communicable diseases. The problem aggravated for the pregnant women or who lose their near and dear ones. The cycle between flood, poverty and poor relief works put women at the margin and on many occasions they are found in a state of emotional vacuum and mental trauma.

The absolute number and proportion of China's elderly population is fast growing. Since population of women in the elderly age is increasing in proportion, aging society in the future is in the sense of an aged women society. With different physiological conditions and social status, health is difference between men and women. The Western academia classic representation this difference as: men are more likely to die than women, but women are sicker than men. In other words, the average life expectancy of men is to be shorter than women, but women are more weak than men (Gu, 2007). The hypothesis of this paper is: do men really superior than women in health?
This article use data from The China Health and Retirement of Pulmonary Function Study (CHARLS), 2010. Data show that health status of men is higher than women in despite of the area is well-developed or less-developed. However, health status is more likely to be closer between men and women in the well-developed area.
With logistic regression model the result is significant with 95% CI that health level is different between men and women.(1)There are gender differences in health level. (2)Men got higher scores than women in Self-assessment Health Status. (3) Women got higher scores than men in Activities of daily living. (4) Men are not healthier than women.

Most of the instruments developed for the measurement and analysis of empowerment have taken as a subject of analysis the married women or in union, proposing various indicators which take as a reference a marital relationship. However we want to look at possible differences that women with different marital status may have in terms of some dimensions of their empowerment process and then inspect and compare the role that these empowerment´s dimensions play in their risk of partner violence.
This work has three objectives. First, the estimation of various indexes related to the empowerment of women. Second, to compare the levels of married and unmarried women across these indicators. And third, to examine the associations between these empowerment dimensions and married and unmarried women’s risk of partner violence.
The data used comes from the Mexican National Survey of Household Relationship’s Dynamics 2011 (Endireh 2011). For the first objective Factorial Analysis is used to estimate additive and weighted indexes. For the second objective we use Analysis of Variance and t-tests. And finally we estimate separated logistic models (for married and unmarried women) to examine the associations of these empowerment dimensions and the risk of partner violence.

Throughout their life, women go through different stages where their autonomy is challenged. Some develop strategies to free themselves from a controlling family member and eventually, if married, from their partner. Thus, navigating through different unions may bring some women to gain more confidence in themselves and in return to have greater control of their own life. However, the relationship between the marital paths and women's perceived autonomy remains unclear. Our main goal is to evaluate the extent to which the various marital trajectories used by women in sub-Saharan Africa affect their perception of autonomy using the Malawi Diffusion and Ideational Change Project. To achieve our goal, we use sequential analysis to illustrate women's marital paths. Subsequently, we use similarly grouped marital trajectories as our main independent variable. Autonomy, our dependent variable, is represented by a series of questions on different dimensions commonly used in the literature. We use ordered logistic regression models to predict autonomy and control for covariates shown to have some effects on women's empowerment. We expect that ever-divorced women will be more likely to have higher autonomy particularly for the dimensions of divorce, decision-making and negotiation of safer sex.

As in many Asian countries violence against women is rampant in Nepal. Several studies on women empowerment and gender-based violence have been conducted in Nepal and elsewhere, however there is a dearth of knowledge on how women empowerment is associated with Gender Based Violence (GBV) and whether the GBV is linked with health service utilization and health outcomes. Thus, the objectives of this paper are to measure the empowerment level of married women of reproductive age, to examine the relationships between women empowerment and GBV and to examine the relationship between spousal violence and health service utilization and the health outcomes. This study has used the domestic violence module of the Nepal Demographic and Health Survey (Nepal DHS) 2011 data. Out of all the women interviewed in the module, data of only those women who were currently in union (a total of 3,084 married women aged 15-49 years) are included in the analysis. A conceptual framework and a Women Empowerment Index will be developed to guide the study and to analyze the linkages. Univariate and bivariate analysis will be used to meet the study objectives. The linkage of GBV with health outcomes and Gender Empowerment Index will be the significant value of this study.
Key words: women empowerment Index, women empowerment and GBV health outcomes

How does locally induced demand for public services adapt to national public policies? Changing fertility puts pressure on the supply of local social services. Sweden is often used as a positive example for welfare states not least when it comes to measures within pre-school child care. Since the 1990s Sweden’s system of collective pre-school child care has been transformed to a system which combines collective care with individual choices. Our main question is how these changing policies have affected the supply and quality of the service of pre-school day care knowing that fluctuations of fertility rates affect the demand. On a national level the number of places available is close to the level of demand. But the demand for pre-school child care fluctuates according to fertility which is expressed at the local level. So at the local level such an equilibrium between demand and supply is more vulnerable and it is far from always that this demand can be met.
To study the local management of the day care system and to test the homogeneity of day care supply to pre-school kids in Sweden in different regions we will use this data together with data on day care (förskolor) from the association for local governments (Statenskommunerochlandsting SKL) and link those data with the database on individual level at Statistics Sweden.

The influence of the gender system on the fertility transition has been demonstrated by many studies especially during the last three decades. Since the International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo in 1994 which stipulated that gender equality is a prerequisite for the achievement of fertility decline, gender issues became the subject of a public discussion particularly in developing countries where equity between the sexes is almost non-existent. This study aims to analyze the relationship between gender inequality and fertility transition in one of the Middle Eastern Arab countries: Syria. Our analysis of gender inequality and fertility is conducted at the aggregate level. We argue that variations in gender inequality across regions need to be considered in an analysis of regional variations in fertility in Syria. We used data from the published results of the census of 2004. The data include cross-sectional measures of socioeconomic and demographic characteristics at the district level for all of Syria. Our analysis was conducted on the population of 270 districts. Our results show that gender inequality exerts a major influence on regional variations in fertility.

This paper analyzes the variables used to measure female empowerment using factor and multilevel analysis with data coming from Egyptian Demographic and Health surveys at different points in tome. The findings highlight the difficulty in measuring female empowerment in a meaningful way, with questions around both the reliability and the validity of the data, with particular issues raised around the temporal comparability of such measures. Although I specifically looked at Demographic and Health surveys in Egypt, the findings suggest that similar problems could be found in other surveys and settings.

This study is an attempt to add information to the larger debate of using the principle of ‘demand and supply’ as means to relate the subtleties of declining sex ratio and women status. This study assessed data of the sex ratio and gender inequality index of 142 countries and Indian case. In the global context, the results reveal that declining sex ratio does not necessarily lead to increase in demand for women. However, if countries are bifurcated by developed and developing, the results fosters contradictory findings: in developed countries skewed sex ratio does not show any association with women status but in developing countries, the women status is decreasing with increasing in male skewed sex ratio. In the India context, it takes the path of developing countries. The skewed sex ratio in India has strong positive association with lower women autonomy. Crime against women is on rise with the worsening trends in sex ratio at birth. Based on the empirical evidence, we hypothesis that the increasing skewed sex ratios or scarcity will increase the demand for women does not hold much truth in developed countries. In Contrast, in developing countries, especially like India, the women status decreases with increasing sex ratio.