Poster session on Gender and population (1)

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.

When prenatal sex-selection practices in neighboring countries like India and China were the subject of much research and concern, Pakistan was still experiencing high fertility rates. Over the last decade fertility rates have declined, with current fertility projected to be around 3.7 births per woman. Unwanted fertility is declining, especially for educated and wealthy women in urban areas. Unfortunately, this decline has not been accompanied by a decline in gender inequality. Girls continue to lag behind in schooling and health outcomes, and women are still largely seen as social and economic burdens on families. As women get closer to achieving their desired family size and strong son preference prevails, Pakistan’s vulnerability to skewed sex ratios increases. This is especially likely given the increase in the availability of prenatal screening technology and the results of abortion studies conducted in the last decade that point to a higher than expected prevalence of induced abortions. This paper aims to assess the prevalence of prenatal sex-selection in Pakistan, as measured by sex ratios at birth, by analyzing birth history data from the demographic and health survey. Changes and differentials in sex ratios at birth can provide a reliable indication of the prevalence of this phenomenon.

In the patriarchal society of India, where male has the right of inheritance on property, headship of the household is also transferable to the male heir. A household is headed by female mostly due to loss of male breadwinner. Around 73 Per cent of female headed household is headed by widow and 12 per cent is headed by those, whose spouse is absent. Gendered vulnerability of households is reflected by the data of income, expenditure and assets, which shows that female headed household is on disadvantage on all the dimension of well being. The direct reason of poverty of female headed household can be observed in dependency of their household in the source of income which gives low return or work-force participation of head of household. Findings from logistic regression suggest that education, land-holdings, area of residence and source of livelihood are the important determinant which explain poverty among both male and female headed household, however marital status of head has emerged as an important determinant of poverty, which shows vulnerability among the household headed by widowed. This paper voices the duality of vulnerability faced by female and her household thus presents the less focused but important aspects of gender and demographic processes.

We study the parent-child transmission of gender roles in Spain using the Time-Use Survey of 2009-2010 (INE). Although this topic has been studied in other countries where gender differences are lower, there are few studies that analyze the phenomenon in a country where differences between male and female are more pronounced and traditional gender roles are more established. Using an indicator based on differences in unpaid work between siblings of different gender, we analyze the effects of parent characteristics, such as mothers’ occupation, fathers’ participation in domestic work, household income and parents’ education on the degree of transmission of gender roles. These variables are shown to explain much of the variation in child gender roles, supporting an important effect of child-parent mimicry in gendered behavior.

Several Asian countries experience an unbalanced sex ratio at birth. If the trend has existed in China and India for over 20 years, it is a very recent phenomenon in Vietnam – it was established in 2008 -, but also extremely rapid. The national sex ratio at birth in 2011 was 112 boys for 100 girls, and exceeded 115 in 18 provinces out of 63. The rising proportion of male births is linked to prenatal sex selection.
This work is based on the comparison of two qualitative surveys, implemented in Hai Duong and Ninh Thuân provinces, in order to understand more about the root cause for son preference, and the different kinds of “pressure” within the family and the community, which lead some women to have sex-selective abortions. If the kinship system in Hai Duong province appears to be strongly patriarchal, hence the necessity to produce a male heir who will perform the ancestor’s worship and carry on the family name (SRB was 120.2 in 2009), we postulate that the situation in Ninh Thuân province is somewhat different (SRB was 110.8 in 2009). Indeed, Ninh Thuân has one of the largest concentrations of Cham people in the country, an ethnic group with a bilateral kinship system - therefore, the need for sons is less prominent, as married daughters still belong to their family clan.

Patriarchal nature of Indian society has legitimized the perpetuation of domestic violence on women since ages. Many times women have to suffer violence which may be perpetrated by their husband or family members/relatives. Using data from NFHS-3, present study examines the relationship between domestic violence and fertility behavior among currently married women in India. Using multiple linear and logistic regressions the relationship between the exposure to different forms of domestic violence and fertility behavior has been explored. Fertility behavior is measured by children ever born, ideal family size and desire for another child. The findings reveal that the experience of any violence reduces the pace of fertility transition. It indicates significantly strong positive effect of life time exposure to domestic physical, domestic sexual and any domestic violence on the children ever born. This suggests that the women who experience domestic violence are likely to produce more children. Findings highlight no significant association between life time exposure to any form of domestic violence with the ideal family size. The study highlights the critical need to address the menace of domestic violence against women that potentially stifles the contemporary fertility transition in India, particularly in the North-central India

As we know that intimate partner violence is understood as a women’s issue, while men are often ignored by mainstream study, especially in the Thai context. This study aims at exploring intimate partner violence experienced by females and males in terms of being perpetrators and victims.
The study used data from the Kanchanaburi demographic Surveillance System (KDSS), Thailand which was collected in 2010. The sample was 611 males and 826 females aged 18-59 years old. The analysis focused on gender and physical intimate partner violence by employing descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis.
It was found that 17.1% of females reported lifetime experience of intimate partner violence while 14.3% of males did. Considering experience of being perpetrators and victims of intimate partner violence, it revealed that 12.7 % of female reported being perpetrators and 15.4 % being victims. While males reported that 13.8 % of them experienced being perpetrators and 9.0 % being victims.
The results from this study confirm that women are more likely to be victims while men are more likely to be perpetrators. However, both males and females are victims of such violence. The campaign for eradicating intimate partner violence should focus not only on males but also females.

Strong son preference which has been a common demographic phenomenon in most of the developing countries could imbalance sex composition of population by altering sex ratio at birth. This has been the center of focus in Nepal after legalization of abortion in 2002. Anecdotal information points to the existence of pre-natal sex selection. Assessment of sex ratio at birth in 1991 and 2001 censuses showed more male than female babies born in many districts in Southern plains. Logistic Regression analysis of NDHS 2006 data on births of order 2 and higher results show that socioeconomic factors have no statistically significant effects. Interaction effects of birth order and number of living sons have emerged as most powerful predictors. Findings signify the tendency towards pre-natal sex selection and sex selective abortion. Such behaviour of demographic masculinization would have far reaching demographic consequence including the problem of marriage squeeze in Nepal in future.

Previous research on sex selective abortions has ignored the interactions between fertility, birth spacing and sex selection. This paper presents a novel approach that jointly estimates the determinants of sex selective abortions, fertility and birth spacing, using data from India's National Family and Health Surveys. For well educated Indian women the predicted number of abortions during childbearing is six percent higher after sex selection became illegal than before while their predicted fertility is eleven percent lower and around replacement level. Women with less education have substantially higher fertility and do not appear to use sex selection.

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.