Male backlash, bargaining, or exposure reduction?: women’s working status and physical spousal violence in India

Labor force participation of women is expected to decrease the risk of spousal violence by enhancing their bargaining power or diminishing their contacts with abusive partners. The opposite effect is predicted when female employment induces male backlash. I identify the effect of female employment on spousal violence by exploiting the exogenous variations in rural women??s working status driven by rainfall shocks and the rice?Cwheat dichotomy. The instrumental variable regression result indicates that female employment significantly reduces the incidence of spousal violence. This result is mainly driven by the exposure reduction effect that dominates male backlash. There is, however, no evidence on the bargaining effect.     

Women’s status and domestic violence in rural Bangladesh: Individual- and community-level effects

We explore the determinants of domestic violence in two rural areas of Bangladesh. We found increased education, higher socioeconomic status, non-Muslim religion, and extended family residence to be associated with lower risks of violence. The effects of women's status on violence was found to be highly context-specific. In the more culturally conservative area, higher individual-level women's autonomy and short-term membership in savings and credit groups were both associated with significantly elevated risks of violence, and community-level variables were unrelated to violence. In the less culturally conservative area, in contrast, individual-level women's status indicators were unrelated to the risk of violence, and community-level measures of women's status were associated with significantly lower risks of violence, presumably by reinforcing nascent normative changes in gender relations.     

Level of choice in older women’s decisions to retire or continue working and associated well-being

Retirement is a complex life transition. Women’s retirement, like their work lives, may be further complicated, for example, by family or financial obligations; they may feel forced to retire or to continue working or feel they have the choice to do so. This study examines the role of voluntary versus involuntary retirement or continued work participation among retirement-age women; specifically, the relationships between choice, work status, and well-being. Compared to women forced to retire, women who chose retirement or continuing to work had higher levels of life satisfaction. Findings highlight the importance of examining retirement within the life course context.     

Witnessing a body in decline: Men’s and women’s perceptions of an altered physical appearance

ABSTRACT

There has been a tendency within the literature to ignore how men and women who are very ill and at the end of life perceive and experience their visibly altered bodies. This article aims to provide new insights about this matter. A qualitative research approach was adopted. In-depth interviews were conducted with 10 hospice patients, 20 family members, and 20 members of hospice staff. Findings reveal that because of masculine and feminine norms, physical appearance is more a matter of concern to women than to men who are close to death. This contradicts theories that suggest that patients experience a disinvestment on their sense of masculinity and femininity alongside the process of bodily deterioration and decay prior impending potential death.     

Comic revisions? Motherhood and women’s comedy in contemporary Germany

Maternal stereotypes and the realities of mothering are prominent themes in Anke Engelke’s Ladykracher and Martina Hill’s Knallerfrauen, two of the most popular sketch shows in twenty-first-century Germany. This article relates their success to social anxieties about motherhood, which Engelke and Hill illuminate through the theme of their sketches as well as through their very use of comedy to do so. I begin by using close-readings of Ladykracher and Knallerfrauen to illuminate the political potential of the sketch form to challenge maternal myths and articulate taboo feelings such as maternal ambivalence. I then consider the innovation of these maternal sketches in view of traditional theories of comedy, which paradoxically draw their imagery from the realm of the maternal even though they discount real women and mothers as comic agents. I argue that the maternal sketches of Engelke and Hill are thus doubly subversive, challenging maternal taboos as well as the discursive and generic norms they sustain.     

Household air pollution as a silent killer: women’s status and solid fuel use in developing nations

Household air pollution is a leading cause of death globally, as 4.3 million people die prematurely each year from illness attributable to use of solid fuels (WHO 2016a). Many studies contend that gender inequalities are likely to greatly shape the global distribution of solid fuel use and its negative health consequences. We conduct an analysis of 91 developing nations using structural equation models on the prevalence of female indoor air pollution deaths among women and the ratio of female to male indoor air pollution deaths. The results illustrate that women’s status is a robust predictor of solid fuel use, and that improved women’s status also correlates directly with lower female to male indoor air pollution deaths ratios and indirectly with reduced female death prevalence through lower solid fuel dependence. Women’s status additionally mediates the effects of some other notable predictors, such as economic development. Overall, the results bring attention to a “silent killer” in less-developed nations and illustrate that greater female empowerment is an important avenue in addressing this global pandemic.     

To have or not to have? Australian women’s childbearing desires,expectations and outcomes

Australia’s low fertility rate is commonly attributed to deliberate decisions by women to avoid having children. Existing theoretical explanations of fertility decision-making mostly view childbearing as a rational, voluntary process and focus on the ‘costs’ to women of having children. Although this may help explain why women do not have children, it contributes very little to understanding why women do have children. This study describes childbearing desires, expectations and outcomes in a population-based sample of 569 30–34-years-old Australian women recruited from the Australian Electoral Roll in 2005. Most women surveyed wanted to have children, and their childbearing outcomes were associated with biological, psychological and social factors including the lack of a partner and adverse health conditions. The factors and their relative importance varied by parity. Most women had fewer children than they desired, and many would have children, or more children, if their circumstances were different. These data challenge prevailing assumptions about women’s childbearing behaviour that women are able to choose when and if they have a child. Based on the findings, a conceptual framework of childbearing behaviour is proposed which builds on existing theoretical explanations to explain why women do and do not have children, differences by parity, and the role of circumstances in women’s childbearing behaviour. The findings and conceptual framework have implications for public policies, and indicate that multiple approaches are required which are sensitive to and address the barriers women face in family formation.     

Going Nuclear? Family Structure and Young Women’s Health in India, 1992–2006

Demography - Scholars traditionally argued that industrialization, urbanization, and educational expansion lead to a decline in extended families and complementary rise in nuclear families. Some...     

Economic development,structural change,and women’s labor force participation:

A sizable literature claims that female labor force participation (FLFP) follows a U-shaped trend as countries develop due to structural change, education, and fertility dynamics. We show that empirical support for this secular trend is feeble and depends on the data sources used, especially GDP estimates. The U also vanishes under dynamic panel estimations. Moreover, cross-country differences in levels of FLFP related to historical contingencies are more important than the muted U patterns found in some specifications. Given the large error margins in international GDP estimates and the sensitivity of the U relationship, we propose a more direct approach to explore the effect of structural change on FLFP using sector-specific growth rates. The results suggest that structural change affects FLFP consistent with a U pattern, but the effects are small. We conclude that the feminization U hypothesis as an overarching secular trend driving FLFP in the development process has little empirical support.     

Soap operas,women, and the nation: Sri Lankan women’s interpretations of home-grown mega teledramas

This essay examines the place of home-grown soap operas, known as mega teledramas, in the lives of women in the South Asian island nation of Sri Lanka. While female audiences are often vilified for their consumption of mega teledramas in Sri Lanka, this study finds that these narratives have assumed a social role in women’s friendship networks, becoming a shared cultural source in their everyday lives. The representations in the mega teledramas were offering a range of diverse meanings to the women and their readings of women protagonists, central to the narratives, were intrinsically linked with nationally constructed notions of womanhood.     

Impact of low fertility and early age at sterilisation on women’s formal education and skill development in South India

This paper examines the impact of low fertility and early age at sterilisation on women’s formal education and skill development in South India. Multilevel ordered-logit modelling of pseudo-cohort data re-organised from the three rounds of National Family Health Survey, and thematic analysis of qualitative data collected from Tamil Nadu and Kerala states showed no evidence of women’s resumption of formal education or uptake of skill development training in the post-sterilisation and post-childcare period. While resuming formal education in the post-sterilisation and post-childcare period is harder to achieve for various individual, household, community and policy reasons, there is greater preparedness and support for women to undertake skill development training. As low fertility and early age at sterilisation are widely regarded as the emerging reproductive norm in India, post-sterilisation and -childcare women will be a significant population group both in number and in proportional terms. No government policies or programs have so far recognised this group. India’s new government should consider targeted skill development programs for post-sterilisation and -childcare women appropriate to their social, economic and educational levels. An important contribution of the family planning program, particularly female sterilisation, for the economic and social development of the family and the wider society will otherwise be lost.     

Facilitators and barriers to pregnant women’s participation in research: A systematic review

Background

Although there is consensus among many that exclusion of pregnant women from clinical research should be justified, there is uncertainty as to whether and why pregnant women themselves would be willing to participate even if they were found to be eligible. The objective was to identify the reasons why pregnant women participate in clinical research and thereby to distinguish between facilitators and barriers.

The influence of financial, human and social capital on Japanese men’s and women’s health in single- and two-parent family structures

Large-scale demographic changes have been occurring in Japan over the last few decades. During this time, the proportion of two-parent (nuclear) and single-parent families have doubled. Despite this rapid increase, the health of individuals in these family structures have received limited attention, as the focus has been directed towards the health of Japan’s aging society and the health implications related to the decline in multigenerational households. However, researchers and policy planners cannot afford to overlook issues that influence the health of men and women in single- and two-parent family structures, not only because these families have become increasingly common throughout the nation, but also because the western literature has indicated that the health of families are largely influenced by the gender-by-family structure divide. Through logistic regression models, using the 1999 Nationwide Family Survey, this paper examines how financial, human and social capital influences the likelihood of good health among men and women in single- and two-parent families. As was expected, key determinants in predicting good health amongst these four sub-groups of parents were found. While parents in two-parent families were the least influenced by various measures of capital, these same measures were found to be significant in predicting good health amongst fathers, and more so mothers, in single-parent families.

Canada’s evacuation policy for pregnant First Nations women: Resignation,resilience, and resistance

Background

Aboriginal peoples in Canada are comprised of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit. Health care services for First Nations who live on rural and remote reserves are mostly provided by the Government of Canada through the federal department, Health Canada. One Health Canada policy, the evacuation policy, requires all First Nations women living on rural and remote reserves to leave their communities between 36 and 38 weeks gestational age and travel to urban centres to await labour and birth. Although there are a few First Nations communities in Canada that have re-established community birthing and Aboriginal midwifery is growing, most First Nations communities are still reliant on the evacuation policy for labour and birthing services. In one Canadian province, Manitoba, First Nations women are evacuated to The Pas, Thompson, or Winnipeg but most – including all women with high-risk pregnancies – go to Winnipeg.

Social adversity in pregnancy and trajectories of women’s depressive symptoms: A longitudinal study

Background

Sound evidence has linked the experience of adversity with depression. Less is known about this association over time.

Australian women’s perceptions and practice of sleep position in late pregnancy: An online survey

BackgroundGoing-to-sleep in the supine position in later pregnancy (≥28 weeks) has been identified as a risk factor for stillbirth. Internationally, public awareness campaigns have been undertaken encouraging women to sleep on their side during late pregnancy.AimThis study aimed to identify sleep practices, attitudes and knowledge in pregnant women, to inform an Australian safe sleeping campaign.MethodsA web-based survey of pregnant women ≥28 weeks’ gestation conducted from November 2017 to January 2018. The survey was adapted from international sleep surveys and disseminated via pregnancy websites and social media platforms.FindingsThree hundred and fifty-two women participated. Five (1.6%) reported going to sleep in the supine position. Most (87.8%) had received information on the importance of side-sleeping in pregnancy. Information was received from a variety of sources including maternity care providers (186; 66.2%) and the internet (177; 63.0%). Women were more likely to report going to sleep on their side if they had received advice to do so (OR 2.3; 95% CI 1.0–5.1). Thirteen (10.8%) reported receiving unsafe advice, including changing their going-to-sleep position to the supine position.DiscussionThis indicates high level awareness and practice of safe late-pregnancy going-to-sleep position in participants. Opportunities remain for improvement in the information provided, and understanding needs of specific groups including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women.ConclusionFindings suggest Australian women understand the importance of sleeping position in late pregnancy. Inconsistencies in information provided remain and may be addressed through public awareness campaigns targeting women and their care providers.