Gender and Development in Youth Media

This article addresses the conditions of possibility for international youth who produce media in the context of the AMIGOS/IDA development program run by Amigos de las Americas (AMIGOS) and an International Development Agency (IDA) in rural Nicaragua. The authors examine the conditions within which youth make decisions to produce media about gender, in order to examine how media, gender, and hope intersect in the context of youth-led development programming. Gender emerges as a popular and significant focus for media production in the context of social change within this context. The authors draw on qualitative case study data to argue that modernist development norms and post-feminist sensibilities contribute to the assemblage of complex pedagogical spaces that animate and inform a cautionary analysis regarding marginalization, power, and the limits of pedagogical interventions and liberation discourses.     

Gender and savings in rural India

In this study we use data from rural India to examine the impact of the birth of a boy relative to the birth of a girl (i.e., the “gender shock”) on the savings, consumption and income of rural Indian households. We find that the gender shock reduces savings for medium and large farm households, although there is no evidence that the shock affects savings for the landless and the small farm households. We also estimate the effect of the shock on income and consumption for the former group in order to determine the source of the drop in savings. The results indicate that the fall in savings subsequent to the gender shock arises from its effect on consumption in the year following the birth, and from its effect on income in other years. Received: 3 September 1996 /Accepted: 15 July 1997     

Gender scripts and age at marriage in India

Research on marriage in developing countries has been somewhat narrow in scope because of both conceptual and data limitations. While the feminist literature recognizes marriage as a key institutional site for the production and reproduction of gender hierarchies, little is known about the processes through which this relationship operates. This article uses data from the newly collected India Human Development Survey 2005 for 27,365 ever-married women aged 25–49 to explore ways in which different dimensions of gender in Indian society shape the decisions regarding age at marriage. We explore the impact of three dimensions of gender: (1) economic factors, such as availability of wage employment, dowry expectations, and wedding expenses; (2) indicators of familial empowerment, such as women’s role in household decision making and access to and control over resources; and (3) markers of gender performance, such as observance of purdah and male-female separation in the household. Results from hierarchical linear models confirm the importance of markers of gender performance but fail to demonstrate a large role for economic factors and familial empowerment.     

Gender disparities in completing school education in India: explaining geographical variations

Researchers in demography, the labour market and health have observed that North Indian women face greater discrimination than women in other zones. This study examines whether a similar pattern is replicated with respect to completion of school education. We find that gender disparities are higher in northern states in rural areas. In urban areas, however, eastern states display greater disparities. This is also confirmed if we control for household traits, community characteristics and the regional context. However, when we decompose the differences in probability of completing school education across gender, the contribution of the control variables is found to be insignificant, relative to that of the coefficient effect (which is sometimes put forward as a measure of discrimination) in both rural and urban areas of Eastern India. The divergence in regional pattern of gender disparity from patterns observed for demographic and health indicators shows that gender discrimination is a complex multilayered phenomenon and the interaction between these layers may assume unexpected forms.     

Sexual and Gender Diversities: Implications for LGBTQ Studies

ABSTRACT

This think piece provides a critical analysis of the terms lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) from an international perspective that draws on citizenship studies, providing some indications of the implications for LGBTQ studies. It outlines difficulties with the LGBTQ acronym in the Global North and South. Internationally, scholarship to support the human rights of non-heterosexuals and gender-diverse people is badly needed, but the think piece concludes that it is crucial to consider the social context of different cases, and to address the materialist, cultural, neo-colonial, and other forces that affect the formation of non-heterosexual and gender-diverse identities.     

The Determinants of Gender Equity in India: Examining Dyson and Moore's Thesis with New Data

In revisiting the influential Dyson and Moore (1983) hypothesis as to why women in South India enjoy relatively more agency than in the North, we conducted an econometric analysis of the determinants of women's mobility and decisionmaking authority. Data for the study come from a household data survey carried out in the Northern state of Uttar Pradesh and in the Southern state of Karnataka in 1995. We find that cross‐cousin and uncle‐niece marriage is more prevalent in Karnataka as expected. Contrary to Dyson and Moore, however, by 1995 a majority of communities in both North and South practiced village exogamy, and dowries in the two regions were of similar size. Reduced‐form, multivariate regressions show that cultural factors affect women's autonomy in ways not earlier predicted. The impact of village exogamy is mixed rather than negative, while that of consanguinity is strongly negative rather than positive as Dyson and Moore surmised. These authors correctly identified the negative effect purdah has on female mobility. Consistent with economic theory, our data show that higher wages for women consistently improve their mobility and authority, while higher male wages decrease them. Improvements in infrastructure–particularly the presence of street lights and schools in the village–are associated with increased women's agency. We conclude, therefore, that economic factors, state action, and restrictions on mobility seem more powerful than kinship structures as explanations of differences in female autonomy between North and South India.     

Economic Development,Gender Inequality,and Demographic Outcomes: Evidence from India

This article examines the determinants of fertility, child mortality, and female disadvantage in child survival in India, using a district‐level panel data set linking 1981 and 1991 censuses. The results question the dominant view that variables directly related to women's agency (specifically, the female literacy rate and the female labor force participation rate) have played the crucial roles here. Instead, variables reflecting the general level of development and modernization are shown to have had the greatest effect in reducing fertility and child mortality during the period of the study. Both economic development and women's agency are seen to have had significant effects in reducing the female disadvantage in child survival. The results suggest, however, that with continued economic development, the two women's agency variables lose their significance in influencing this disadvantage. The policy implications of these findings are considered.     

加强人口与性别研究 推进小康社会建设

本文根据彭佩云同志在由中国人民大学妇女研究中心和全国妇联妇女研究所于2009年11月28日在中国人民大学举办的人口性别发展学术论坛上的发言形成。强调了人口与性别问题在发展中的重要地位、产生根源的复杂性、以及社会后果的滞后性,希望加强各学科的密切合作,发扬学术民主,深化人口与性别问题的研究。     

Media Exposure and Health in Europe: Mediators and Moderators of Media Systems

This study examined media exposure as an explanatory factor for individual and cross-national differences in self-assessed general health. In studying media exposure, traditional media (television, radio, and newspapers) and contemporary media (internet) were separately considered. Aside from hypotheses about the relation between media exposure and general health, we also tested hypotheses regarding the mediating role of social isolation and mean world syndrome as well as the moderating role of different media systems across countries. Therefore, we used European Social Survey 2010, covering 25 European countries (n = 36,692). The results of our multilevel regression analyses indicated that exposure to television was negatively related to general health, whereas exposure to radio and newspapers were positively related to health. For contemporary media, findings indicated consistent positive relations between internet exposure and health across. Furthermore, limited support was found for the mediating role of social isolation and the mean world syndrome in the link between media exposure and health. Across media systems, findings for the relations between exposure to the various types of media and health proved to be robust.