Gender and population

While value chain is increasingly adopted as a pro-poor approach to empower women, its impact on women participating in agricultural value chains can’t be generalized. Mixed method approach using sequential exploratory design was used to explore women perception and participation in onion value chain on their empowerment. Index scales were constructed to measure women empowerment and ordinal logistic regression was used to measure determinant of women empowerment. Women related empowerment to achievement in their lives in social and economic contexts and majority were categorized into medium empowerment. The determinants of their empowerment were marital status, income, education, land ownership, credit and participation in onion value chain development activities. Women participating in value chain development activities were more likely to be empowered than their counterparts. Men’s attitude and reluctantancy to accept changes suggested by women and control over income accrued from their activities are among the barrier for women empowerment. The study recommends for use of gender sensitive approaches in designing and implementing development programmes on women empowerment. Men and informal/tribal leaders should be involved in women empowerment initiatives in order to change their mindset towards women empowerment.

One of the primary concerns of the Millennium Development Goals is to “promote gender equality and empower women”. The paper examines how violence against women is portrayed in selected Nigerian home movies. Women and girls in Nigeria are still subjected to various culturally based forms of abuse, exploitation and discrimination, especially wife battering, rape and other forms of sexual violence, female genital mutilation, trafficking in women, and inhuman widowhood practices. The paper discusses how Nigerian dramatists present or misrepresent gender related violence in their works. It relates the discussion to the local social and cultural contexts in which these films are set, and to the wider global debates about gender justice and human rights. The paper focuses on a representative selection of video films which portray the Nigerian woman burdened in various ways with patriarchal prejudices and very obnoxious native laws and customs that violate her human rights and dignity. It concludes with some comments on the adverse social consequences of violence against women, and the relevant international conventions, local legislation and other social responses that seek to redress these gender related anomalies in Nigeria. It also considers how home videos can be used more creatively to combat gender-based violence.

Previous research from the Nordic countries suggest that Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish mothers have developed a preference for having a daughter. Finland constitutes an exception. Finnish mothers with two girls have approximately ten per cent lower risks of continued childbearing than those with two boys. If there really is a son preference, we are likely to expect two things. First, it would manifest in lower separation risks in couples with sons as compared to those with daughters. Second, there should be a higher risk of continued childbearing of women with daughters than of those with sons also at parity three. We use longitudinal population register data that make it possible to study both these aspects simultaneously, for the same women, by constructing families and follow them prospectively over time. Preliminary results of Cox regression models say that a first-born girl raises the risk of parental separation with approximately seven per cent as compared with a first-born boy. Also patterns of parity progression indicate a boy preference in Finland. Like in the U.S., these effects although seem to have attenuated during the past decades, suggesting a more egalitarian distribution of fathers’ attention to sons and daughters.

Asia and the Pacific is one of the most disaster prone areas in the world. Every year, volcanos, earthquakes, floods and other natural hazards have caused thousands of deaths, hundreds of injuries, and billions of dollars in economic losses each year. Many billions of dollars in humanitarian assistance, emergency loans, and development aid are expended annually. In recent years, there has also been an increased awareness that effective disaster risk reduction needs to be addressed within the wider context of sustainable development. However, efforts to reduce the risks of natural hazards in Asia and the Pacific region, still does not prioritize the need to mainstream gender into Disaster Risk Reduction. This research therefore, aims to make transparent, qualitative analysis on why it is economically critical to prioritize and address the needs of women and men, girls and boys, to be integrated into Disaster Risk Reduction in selected Asia and the Pacific countries.

This study has two-fold objectives; firstly, the paper aims to find out how far the size of household landholding directs patriarchal traits. Secondly, the paper innovate a means to understand the contributing factors to lowering women’s autonomy, thus, explore the relevance of ‘Landholding-patriarchy hypothesis’. Results indicate considerable variation in women’s autonomy with the size of their household landholding: women’s autonomy decreases with increasing size of household landholding. Evidence suggests that, landholding directs patriarchal traits, as manifested in a reasonable influence on women’s autonomy in rural India.

Women’s nutrition and health status is central to the quality of their lives and it is the key determinant for the survival of future generations to come. Women are also the main providers of informal health care to other members of the household in developing countries. It is generally argued that economic growth and prosperity brings means of health care and nutrition within the reach of all sections of society. Haryana is one such state in the country which has attained distinction in food grains production and is ranked among top states in terms of availability of infrastructure. Through this paper, attempt has been made to study the women’s nutrition and health status in Haryana. The paper is based on primary data obtained from 16 villages spread over 8 districts in Haryana which represent 4 distinct groups in terms of similarities and differences in various health and demographic parameters. Nutritional status of women has been studied by their body mass index (BMI), while health status has been studied in preventive and curative care. Preventive care is ante-natal care during child bearing stages and institutional or safe deliveries and curative care is measured as visit to doctor in case of any ailment. Determinants of women’s nutrition have been discussed with reference to socio economic characteristics of households.

According to Bongaarts low fertility model, gender preferences tend to help increase fertility rate. It is believed that when both children’s gender and number are taken into account in family’s fertility plan and child-bearing behavior, couples would be very likely to bear more kids in attempt to achieve the ideal sex structure, even if their expectation for children in number has been met.

Chinese people show very strong gender preferences especially for sons partly because of its agricultural-dominated life style, which has been indicated by many- years abnormal high sex ratio at birth. Meanwhile, China has seen its fertility rate dropped below replacement level since 1990s. How do gender preferences affect China’s fertility level?

Based on national survey data, this paper explores the relationship between gender preferences and the number of children in China urban families. Results show gender preference does not necessarily mean male preference in contemporary China, but diversifies and no gender preference accounts for the highest percentage among urban married young people with children. Preference for both boys and girls will be likely to increase the number most, no preference to decrease the number most, and female preference tends to increase the number more than boy preference.

Numerous studies have examined the sources, consequences, and manifestation of son preference in fertility behavior. A large proportion of these studies have focused on low fertility settings in East Asia, and especially in the skewed sex ratios of birth resulting from the practice of sex selective abortion. This paper examines the impact of son preference on individual fertility behavior in a high fertility setting, the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt).Many studies have noted the persistently high fertility rates in the oPt and have connected it to conflict. However, some anecdotal evidence exists for the impact of son preference on fertility behavior, where women are more likely to continue having children until they’ve reached the desired number of sons. This paper aims to examine the role son preference and sex distribution of current children play in fertility behavior in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), both in terms of timing of fertility and progression to subsequent parity levels using data from birth history calendars from a national health survey conducted in 2006. Parity-specific event history analysis was conducted. The results of this study show that after accounting for socio-demographic characteristics, women with a greater number of sons are less likely to have another child, irrespective of parity.

This paper aims to explore the concept of household head in the Population Census whether gender preference exists or not. Furthermore, to evaluate the factors which affect to the conception of the head of household in each country being observed? The countries are Italy, Austria and Indonesia. In addition to that, the cultural context and socio-economic factors are also being observed in terms of inclusion in the main determination of conception. The literature review and some data evidences on some indicators will show to prove the assumption and hypothesis. The data source of this research paper is derived from IPUM-International Data, except for Indonesian Population Census data set which is obtained from BPS Statistics Indonesia. The main purpose of this research is to support better design of population census instrument for improvement of data quality and methods with gender sense design. The result of this research paper will be very useful in the refining concept of the head of household in the population census data collection. Finally, the gender bias in the population census of household head concept can be overcome and can depict the real condition of population demographic on gender basis.

Based on the policy, Integrated Essential Reproductive Health (IERH) Services should be implemented in Primary Health Care (PHC). In fact, there are only few PHCs that implemented the services. The most of the services in the PHC are related to women, if the government does not provide IERH services, it means that women cannot access their rights. The objective of this research was to identify gender inequity in the reproductive health service. A qualitative approach with a Socialist Feminist Perspective was used, and a series of open-ended interviews were conducted. The study was undertaken in Tasikmalaya District, West Java Province, Indonesia in 2010.

This study found that IERH services policy could not be fully implemented because of most policy makers are men, and their policies are gender biased, which tends to ignore women’s rights. These strong patriarchal and capitalist ideologies have restricted women from making decisions and accessing their reproductive health rights. Privatization of the health sector has decreased the accessibility and affordability of the services for women. Moreover, the health workers and religious leaders have applied radical patriarchal interpretation of the Islamic teaching and values against the services.