Gender and population

The sex ratio at birth in China has exceeded 107 for nearly 30 years. This paper reviews the policy responses to gender imbalance in China, which include China's strategic policies and actions on the governance of the male-skewed Sex Ratio at Birth (abbreviated as SRB). First, as its official position has evolved, the Chinese government has introduced a series of laws and regulations at both the national and provincial levels. Second, this paper analyzes a national government-oriented public policy system and strategic platform, the "Care for Girls" Campaign, including its history and latest progress. These policy responses and interventions have substantially enhanced women's social status and reduced the SRB. This paper highlights policy responses and their results using the latest Population Census data to assess changes in SRB during the decade from 2000 to 2010 in China.

In developed countries, there has been large progress towards gender equality in many fields, in particular employment. However, gender inequalities are still huge in the domestic sphere. In particular women still perform the bulk of domestic and parental tasks in spite of the dramatic increase in the number of dual-earner couples. The aim of this study is twofold. First it intends to describe the long term evolution of male and female involvement in housework and parenting. Second, it aims at disentangle factors that plays in favor of an increasing or a decreasing of gender gap in housework, i.e. technical progress, changes in family structure, social changes and changes of norms. The three last French time-use surveys provide a unique tool to analyze the evolution and the determinants of gender gap in housework during the last 25 years. We show that male involvement evolves extremely slowly while that of women decreases. Using Oaxaca decomposition techniques, we conclude that changes in family structure, the level of female education and labor market participation and in domestic equipment explain the decrease of gender gap in housework but the persistence of traditional roles of men and women acts as a brake on these changes.

Violence within the household has been emerged as a potential factor for physical, mental, sexual, reproductive and child health as well as contraceptive behaviour and infant mortality also. Physical violence against women is one of the gender based violence and affects women’s status in many ways. But which factors derive the dynamics of physical violence is not received adequate attention in India. This study examines the relationship between alcohol use and physical violence as a public health issue. For this study the most populous state of India which is Uttar Pradesh has been considered and the data has been taken from NFHS-III (2005-06). It was observed that 44 percent of women have been physically abused by their husbands. If their husband takes alcohol sometime and often the prevalence of physical violence has been found to be 58 and 77 percent respectively, however, it is only 38 percent in case where husband does not take alcohol. Logistic regression results show significant effects of husband’s alcohol drinking behaviour on physical violence. It was also observed that education, occupation, eligible women in house, standard of living, media exposure and proper spousal communication are possible predictive measures of physical violence.

It is well known that married people have better physical and mental health than their non-married counterparts. But Korean demographic trends in women’s marriage are additional evidence that might address that single life of women is becoming less disadvantaged. The proportion of the population aged 29~34 and never-married has dramatically increased for women, and most of never-married women become better educated and make progress achieving socioeconomic independence (Statistics Korea, 1975~2010 Census). With higher rate of women’s non-marriage, the norm of 'proper age' at marriage and the meaning of never-married has dramatically changed, and even social stigma used to be attached to single women aged over the 'proper age' has notably diminished (Yoon, 1994; Kim, 2005). These changes suggest that non-married women in Korea now becoming more and more selective, which may affect the health of this population as compared to those married counterparts.Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate not only the relationship between marital status and the health status, but also the health differentials in women by marital status and employment status to assess the meaning of the changes among Korean women.

Like other developing countries in the midst of demographic transition, Egypt is experiencing changes in the relative distribution of children, population in the working ages and older persons. The proportion of older adults (60 years +) was 6% in 2006 and is expected to be 12% in 2030.

A household based survey was conducted in 2006 to collect information for the first time on living conditions and informal support received by older adults. The study sample included about 2000 persons 60 years and over of both sexes.

Findings reflected striking gender gaps in demographic, social, economic and health conditions. Older males were more likely to be currently married, better educated, better economically secured and enjoyed better health conditions than older women. They were also more likely to go for out-door recreational activities. Women were more likely to be widowed, living alone in their households. Many of them were living in extended families with married children, with implications on their autonomy. Women were also less likely to receive functional care and assistance in instrumental activities of daily life from family members compared to men.

Some recommendations to promote quality of life of older adults were raised.


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Access to affordable and clean energy is key to the sustainable energy security of the nation. Local availability, perceive to be ‘cheap’ make biomass as preferred fuel for cooking in rural India. In order to reduce the reliance on biomass as fuel, government of India has been providing LPG/PNG at subsidised rate to its people. However almost in entirety LPG/PNG subsidies are cornered by the urban areas and rural rich. Analysis of data from Census of India 2011 reconfirms the above stated statement. There are spatial pockets of concentrated usage of LPG/PNG. Developed (relatively) states and urban India have benefited more than the Indo-gengetic belt, central tribal and hilly regions of India. Within urban India, million plus cities are biggest beneficiaries. By curtailing subsidy, government of India will be able to reduce the subsidy burden but is risking the marginal people (Women, urban poor, people and just above poverty line). Paper argues that there should be policy support to address the issue of indoor air pollution and transfer of cash should be made in the name of women rather than the head of the household. Alternatively government should promote and utilise the savings from LPG subsidy for renewable energy such as biogas, and solar energy.

The current belief in our society is that teaching is an easy job and their role is quite simple having no complexities, tension and conflicts. This widely prevalent belief is incorrect for the outsider’s perception of the role of women teachers. Therefore a study was done in order to discover the stress level of women teachers and the factors that lead to stress and its related illness in Chennai city, India. The primary data was collected through schedules with the sample size of 100. Based on the help of percentage it is found that the stress level of teaching community is more i.e., 47% is very or extremely stressed. The increasing workload on teachers, distance and mode of travel, less remuneration and an increasing number of pupils behaving in an unacceptable ways are some of the trends identified as leading to a rise in stress and its related illnesses. The number of teachers using Antidepressants and sleeping pills is identified as 28%. These facts threaten the upcoming generation which may demolish the teaching profession. The study also suggests stress management technique and helps us to create awareness among the teaching union for betterment of teaching environment.

Gender mainstreaming has been a fundamental in the Gender and Development discourse. This has necessitated simplifying concepts related to gender inequality which in turn has created unrealistic expectations as to the ways in which social change takes place. It has thus legitimized an approach of rolling out programs, getting a few “jobs for the girls” and making development cooperation ‘right’ for women as main instruments of change. The strategy, which was linked to dominant existing modernization paradigm of the 1960s and 1970s, was also only concerned with women-specific activities, where women were seen as passive recipients of development assistance like the provision of extension services, credit facilities and other income generation activities. There is still a long way to go before we have managed to significantly reduce inequalities between women and men globally. Equality between men and women constitutes an indicator of success in good governance. However women are not treated equally in governance institution and process. The gender issues become a core consideration not simply for specific departments or ministries dealing with women, but for all actors across a range of issue-areas and also at all stages in the policy process from conception and legislation to implementation and evaluation.

A main feature of demographic ageing is the increased presence of women. Next to this evident fact it is also shown that because of gender differences elderly women meet worst health conditions and higher risks of widowhood, social handicap and economic dependence.
Economic security in old age depends on several factors, including the protection provided by social security. Coverage of the contributory pension system for elderly women is lower than men´s because of lower labour rights and shorter periods of contribution that are neglected in the planning and legislation of social security.
This paper analyzes the individual, familiar, and contextual factors that determine how women 60 and over access to a social security pension. Data comes from the National Survey of Employment and Social Security 2009. It is highlighted that only 17.6% get a pension and that factors such as age, marital situation, education level, number of children, contributions and the degree of urbanization of the place of residence determine the type and characteristics of the pension.

Autonomy is the ability to obtain information and make decisions about one's own concerns. It facilitates access to material resources such as food, land, income and other forms of wealth, and social resources including knowledge, power, prestige within the family and community. The article tries to address the role and importance of men education in women autonomy in India. The data from National Family Health survey round-3 was analyzed for India. The results from the bi-variate analysis shows that the women autonomy increases if husband is studied higher education. The findings shows that pattern of impact of husband education is almost same in all the (five) decision making. Around 15% of the women have not been involved in any decision making and only 33% of the women involved in the entire decision making. However the results are quite opposite if we control husband education with age of respondent, age of husband, women education, place of residence, type of family structure, religion, caste, wealth index and sex of household head. Husband education is not an important factor for women autonomy and there some other factors play an important role in women autonomy then the husband education.