Gender and population

I assess the impact of Ishraq, a second-chance informal education program for adolescent girls in rural Upper Egypt. The program provides literacy and life skills. Participation is voluntary resulting in a potential selection bias. An experimental design with randomization of treatment and control villages was infeasible. Instead, propensity score matching to identify control villages matching Ishraq villages in terms of population size, poverty level and prevalence of girls’ education.
The evaluation method used is propensity score matching at the end of the program. Additionally, the IV method is used where the instrument is the distance to the youth center YC, where the program is housed, as it proxies cost of participation. A set of attitudinal and knowledge outcomes is used to measure the impact of Ishraq: (1) improvement in girls’ functional literacy, (2) mobility and access to safe social spaces, (3) acquisition of life skills, including financial literacy skills, knowledge of hygiene, general health, puberty changes and reproductive health, and participation in sports, and (4) empowerment-related outcomes including attitudes toward gender roles and marriage, knowledge of women’s rights and basic civic facts, attitudes toward FGM, self-esteem and participation in decision-making.

The findings of Census-2011 pertaining to drastic decline in Child Sex Ratio in Kashmir Valley (India) seem to be shocking given the Muslim majority character of the region, poor socio-economic status of women but lower gender discrimination in health and nutrition. Initially, the State Government closed ultrasound clinics, but due to the limited availability of reliable information on the extent of use of ultrasound for sex selection, most of the ultrasound clinics have been reopened. However, the decline in CSR has become a subject of debate both among academicians and civil society, but hardly any academic effort has been made to analyse the reality behind the decline in CSR in Kashmir. Using data from various sources regarding SRB and use of ultrasound and interaction with the census enumerators, the present paper aims to analyse whether the female feticide in Kashmir is a reality or the politicization of census has resulted in a drastic decline in CSR in Kashmir. The findings indicate that Kashmir has a normal SRB and women who use ultrasound do so for diagnostics purposes and not necessarily for sex determination of fetus. The underreporting of females in Census seems to have resulted in skewed child sex ratio in Kashmir.

Previous studies of gender preference were usually based on a gender discrimination approach. This approach identifies son preference with gender preference, and the causes of gender preference explained most through parents’ side. The primary purpose of this study is to provide an alternative theory of gender preference.
For this study, the value of children(VOC) is defined at the macro level, based on the Coleman’s Rational Choice Model. VOC consists of three elements-(1) the child capital, (2) the resources in which the child has interests but parents control, and (3) parent’s power. The first element is related to the demand side of the value of children: the side of parents who determine the resources in which they have interests but children control. The second and third elements explain why children of a particular gender provide their parents with child capital and how parents ensure they will obtain that capital. If these three elements of the value of children tend to concentrate in children of a particular gender, then the value of children of that gender is assumed to be higher than that of the other gender. Also the value of children of a particular gender is determined by the family strategy whereby individuals use their kin in the historical and cultural contexts of the society in which they live.

Present paper is an attempt to understand the patterns of inequality in attaining higher education, and specifically how these patterns differs from different socioeconomic groups as well as across the states in India. Analysis has been done using the Indian Human Development Survey, 2005. Findings show that in different socioeconomic standing, quite significant differences were found in the attainment of higher education. Women in younger ages were more educated as compared to their counterparts. Women residing in urban areas and belonging to better-off families were having higher levels of education. States like Rajasthan, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh are more disadvantaged in regards to education of women as these states are having poor socioeconomic background. However, in states like Kerala, Assam, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Punjab, a better picture is visible in terms of higher education. But overall, as level of education increases the proportion of women receiving it decreases, which clearly depicts the inequalities in receiving higher education. In India, very few women got the opportunity to complete their bachelor’s or master’s degree. Thus, there is an urgent need to formulate appropriate policy measures which can benefit women who are equally responsible for building the nation’s future.

This paper aims to observe the effect of socioeconomic factors inherently on disable people related to the tendency of people with disability would become poor or not. The two socioeconomic factors are segregated into each variable, namely: a) Economic factor consisting of three: ‘access to business loans’, ‘jobs sector’ and ‘working hours’; whilst b) Social factor consisting of two: ‘access to courses (informal school)’ and ‘mean years schooling (average length of school)’. All those socioeconomic factors simultaneously determine the independent variables. The dependent variable is a result of classification (categorical data) whether the part or the whole socioeconomic factors (dependent variables) simultaneously make contribution and lead to the high tendency of disable people categorized being poor or not. The poor classification of population is accumulation of the two deciles out of the ten poor groups based on basic consumption approach. The main source of data for this study is the National Socio Economic Survey 2009 which this year focuses on the Social and Cultural Education in the questionnaire module and core questionnaire. The method of data processing and calculation is applying the logistic regression analysis with specific model on Forward Wald method to measure the odd ratio of individual characteristics.

Which factor needs the highest attention to reduce Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) against women in Bangladesh is the aim of this study. We used data from currently married women only of age 15-49 years from Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey 2007. Univariate, bivariate techniques and multivariate logistic regressions were performed. The results show that 24% women experienced any form of IPV. The most experienced form is slap and the main reason reported is without any reason. The youngest, working women are more likely to experience IPV than their respective counterparts. Muslim respondents are significantly more likely to report experiencing violence. Spousal violence is less for respondents with more marital duration; and with increases of age at first marriage IPV decreases. Unskilled labors reported experiencing more violence than other occupational groups; and respondents also reported having more IPV with husbands from unskilled labor group. Spousal violence is more among those respondents whose mothers have ever been beaten by their father, and who thinks wife beating is justified to them. Finally father ever hit or beat respondent’s mother is found to be the most significant factor for IPV which needs urgent attention to reducing this important social problem.

Agrarian development in China was basically characterized by contrasting stages of collectivization and decollectivization over the past six decades, and each resulted in sweeping social and economic changes. The lived experiences of rural women’s and men’s daily productive and reproductive activities in specific geographic settings, may have shaped their surrounding environment and vice versa. So far, research on the linkages between gender and the environment in rural China has received little attention and no empirical study at the village level has been carried out. Based upon an ethnographic fieldwork in an Inner Mongolian village, this article seeks to document the evolution of the gender-environment nexus and explore its determinants in larger processes over the past 60 years. A closer look at everyday experiences of local men and women indicates that the complex intersections of gender and the environment occurred in larger processes at the macro level, which were closely linked to the role of the powerful state. The dynamic relations were implicated simultaneously in shifting social norms and practices at the local level. This paper therefore suggests a holistic approach towards understanding of shifting and complex intersections, contributing to ongoing feminist debates on women/gender and the environment.

This study attempts to answer several questions: has self-rated health (SRH) improved in Bangladesh; are life expectancy (LE) and healthy life expectancy (HLE) increasing in the same direction, and how much are the relative increases; and how can HLE be improved? We used data from the World Values Survey (WVS). The results show that perceived health improved between 1996 and 2002. For males, statistically significant increases in the expected number of years lived in good SRH were found, though life expectancy showed a decrease of about 3 to 6 months. Comparatively, males expected fewer life years spent in good health but a much larger proportion of expected life in good health than females. This was true only in 2002, however. Different states of health were also found to be associated with socio-demographic differences. Finally and most strikingly, in multivariate analyses, life satisfaction was the only factor found to have a significant positive and growing impact on SRH for males and females in both years, although in both years the impact was much more pronounced for females than for males. This demonstrates that individuals with life satisfaction are more likely to have good SRH. Therefore, greater emphasis should be placed on life satisfaction when efforts are made to improve SRH and HLE in Bangladesh.

Over the last couple of years South Korea has exhibited a lowest fertility rate of slightly less than 1.2 birth per woman. Daegu, one of the provinces of South Korea is lower than the national level- 0.99 birth per woman in 2005 and 1.15 birth per women in 2011. Health, gender and childcare policy decisions undoubtedly play a major role in the trend of birth rate in the region. While the government has raised budgets for low birth, the birth rate has improved including Daegu region. However, other important factors rear their heads as the desire to have children. This paper explores a closer look at the case of Daegu focusing on prevailing attitudes on marriage, childbearing, and gender role are examined to reflect on the demographic problem of few children. The policy development and implementation are analysed to uncover how they promote birth rate in terms of gender roles between men and women in particular.

This paper is based from the 2011 Indonesian Gender and Reproductive Health Survey of Year 6 and Year 12 students, teachers and school principals (N=8972). The aim is to evaluate students’ and teachers’ understanding and reporting of sexual harassment. In Indonesia sexual harassment has started to be introduced in Year 5 in Sport and Healthy Living education. Our bivariate and logistic regression analysis showed female teachers were more likely to classify behaviour as sexual harassment comparing to male teachers. There are some provincial differences where teachers in South Sulawesi were the least likely to classify any behaviour as constituting sexual behaviour compared to teachers in other provinces. Teachers in religious schools were significantly more likely to classify behaviour such as being touched, touching in the genital area, being forced to touch another’s genitals, forced to be naked, rape and being treated as a sexual object as sexual harassment compared to teachers in non-religious schools. Among students, if harassed, girls were more likely to report and take action compared to boys. Year 6 students were more likely to report harassment to parents, police or teachers and school principals while Year 12 students will handle the matter themselves.