Search results

The purpose of this paper is to assess the effect of delaying first pregnancy in reducing burden of unintended pregnancy (UP) among married adolescent girls in urban slums of Bangladesh.

This cross-sectional survey was conducted among 783 married adolescents in five urban slums of Bangladesh during January 2013–January 2014.

Half of the respondents’ first pregnancy was reported as unintended. Of the respondents, 58 percent with no school education had experienced UP which was 38 percent among respondents with eight year’s education. Respondents who did not willingly agreed to their marriage experienced more UP (61 percent) than those who were agreed/got married by their own choice (51 percent). Respondents having five years of age difference with their husbands experienced more UP (58 percent) than those with ten years of age difference (46 percent). Respondents aged 14 years at first conception experienced 63 percent UP, while the respondents aged 18 years had 35 percent UP experience. Of the respondents, 66 percent who became pregnant within one year of marriage reported their pregnancy as unintended which was 29 percent among those who delayed their first pregnancy for three years.

Significant association was observed between pregnancy intention with respondents’ educational status (p=0.03), age difference with husbands (p=0.02), age at first conception (p<0.01) and delaying first pregnancy (p<0.001).

This study aims to assess the associations of early marriage and spousal age difference (independent of early marriage) with reproductive and sexual health and autonomy in decision-making among married women before conception.

The present study was a part of a three-year community intervention to improve the preconception health of young married women (20–35 years) in the West Delhi district of India. The six key outcomes assessed were: knowledge of reproductive health, discussions related to sexual health, history of anemia, use of contraceptives by women, frequency of consumption of meals per day and the autonomy in decision-making for household expenditures. Unadjusted and adjusted logistic regression models were used to explore the associations between the two key predictors (early marriage or spousal age difference), sociodemographic variables and six outcomes. The results were expressed as odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI). A total of 2,324 women, enrolled from four wards in the district using cluster-based sampling, were interviewed.

Around 17% of women were married by the exact age of 18, and 20% were elder or just one year younger than their husbands. Women who were married early had low reproductive health knowledge (OR (95% CI): 0.48 (0.38–0.60)) and a lower probability of expressing autonomy (OR (95% CI): 0.78 (0.62–0.97)). However, women older than men or younger by just one year in the married relationship had higher reproductive health knowledge (OR (95% CI): 1.25 (1.01–1.54)) than women younger than men more than two years.

Under the umbrella of the preconception care domain, frontline workers should emphasize counseling girls and young women to marry late and delay the first pregnancy.

For decades, researchers studying female genital cutting have sought to understand why the practice continues amidst abundant evidence indicating that serious health consequences can result from the more aggressive forms of cutting. Behavioral ecology theory is applied to data collected among Ghana’s Kassena-Nankana to highlight the gendered cultural forces that keep FGC practice in place through successful reproductive outcomes. With its strong association to marriageability, and thus women’s status and access to resources through marriage, circumcision has long been obligatory. However, the social transformation that is currently underway in this rural population is bringing a new perspective to the value of education, which is replacing circumcision as the resource access currency.

This chapter will portray the long and up-hill battle to abolish child marriage in India. It will focus on a few key moments of changing discourses on child marriage. While being categorized as a legitimate customary cultural practice over the centuries, there was a crucial generational shift towards addressing it as a violation of human rights within the past decade/s. For portraying these shifts, the metaphor of an up-hill battle has been chosen mainly for two reasons. On the one hand, it explicitly asks for investigating into the two parties (armies) involved in the violent “battle” over territory and/or ideas. On the other hand, it requests an understanding about the (metaphorical) landscape, with its slopes and pitfalls, reflecting the socio-cultural and political “landscape” where the battle is set.

At the global level, the United Nations has consistently advanced the agenda of addressing and safeguarding human rights, specifically for children. In India, successive governments have contributed to improving the protection of young girls, and boys, and tackling child marriage has been a crucial step to doing so. Thus, global conventions have been translated not only into national policies, but also into comprehensive legislation/s. Above all, the current Modi government strongly endeavours to (re-)brand India as a rapidly emerging digital global economy, rather than one characterized by violations of human rights, such as child marriage. Conceptually, the chapter will portray child marriage as a form of structural violence, where governance mechanisms fail to protect children from falling victim to human right abuses.

Children are the most vulnerable group owing to long lasting impact of the violation of human rights in term of proper nutrition and their right to live. The purpose of this paper is to assess the risk of child mortality associated with size of child at birth and mother’s anemia level in northern India.

The data were used from 2015–2016 National Family Health Survey (NFHS). The participants (n = 41,412) were children aged under-five years from north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The main outcome measure was child deaths defined by under-five mortality. The univariate, bivariate and multivariate analyses were used in data analysis. Kaplan–Meier analyses, Log-rank tests and Cox’s regression analyses were performed to fulfill the objective of the study.

There were a total of 2,835 deaths out of 41,412 births in the past five years preceding the survey period. Children of very small size at birth were significantly two and half times more likely to die than children of average size at birth. The estimated adjusted hazard ratio indicated that the children of severely anemic mothers were significantly 1.5 times more likely to die compared to children of not anemic mothers. Size of child at birth, mother’s anemia level, mother’s age at time of her first birth, wealth index and mother’s education were significantly associated with the under-five mortality in northern India.

The limitation of this study is recall errors arising from the dates of birth and death given by women interviewed in the survey were minimized by restricting the analyses to births within the five-year period preceding the survey.

This study advocates the promotion of comprehensive prevention strategies through appropriate institutional mechanism would be the best intervention or adaptive mechanism to reduce the adverse impact of size of child at birth, mother’s anemia level on under-five mortality in Uttar Pradesh, India.

This research is original. This study enjoys a unique importance by exploring effect of size of child at birth and mother’s anemia on child survival in developing countries like India.

Changes in information technology, demographics and corporate culture are considered when predicting the form, size and location of future offices. Argues that the likelihood of companies adopting more flexible work patterns such as teleworking, hotdesking, etc. and an increasingly distributed office network means that current methodologies used to model future demand using variables, such as rental charges and building costs, might prove to be inappropriate given probable future trends. Proposes that alternative data sets will have to be considered and modelled if forecasts are to reflect these changes.

Huge gap exists between demand and supply of seeking health care leads to remain high maternal mortality in rural areas of Uttar Pradesh, India. The purpose of this paper is to make an effort in this direction.

This paper draws on Three Delays Model to understand the reasons behind poor maternal health outcomes among 964 currently married women aged 15–34, given birth in last two years preceding the survey including six case studies in poor settings of Northern India.

Receiving minimum four antenatal care and identifying the severity of obstetric complications during pregnancy was quite low (7 and 34 per cent, respectively). Major delay in seeking care in district was decision delay (average four days) followed by arranging transportation (average 4 hours) and start treatment within an hour after reaching health facility. Health services and trained human resources are mainly concentrated at towns and poor supply of drugs and equipment in labour room is always in demand at primary level in the district in area. Delays in decision making, travel and treatment compounded by ignorance of obstetric complications and poor healthcare infrastructure are the major contributing factors of maternal deaths in the district in area.

Interventions to improve timely seeking of medical care for obstetric complications may need to more effectively target husbands and family members rather than women. Strengthening of primary and secondary level facilities and timely referral to tertiary level care can play a crucial role in improving obstetric care in the district in rural areas.

The Equal Pay Act 1970 (which came into operation on 29 December 1975) provides for an “equality clause” to be written into all contracts of employment. S.1(2) (a) of the 1970 Act (which has been amended by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975) provides:

Racial/ethnic minority, low-income teens represent a significantly underserved group in terms of reproductive health care including birth control and prenatal care. This paper provides patients’ perspectives through analysis of in-depth interviews with 51 African American teen mothers about their reproductive health care and focuses on the influence of gender ideologies and behavior expectations on teens’, and their perceptions of their mothers’, decisions around these issues. The findings suggest that attention to cultural influences of gender on teens’ decisions around sexuality and reproduction is critical to our theoretical and practical approaches to expanding health care services to underserved populations.

Miscarriage is the most common adverse pregnancy outcome, with an estimated one in four pregnancies ending in loss. Despite its prevalence, and significant effects, early pregnancy loss is commonly unacknowledged by organizations, and the intersect of miscarriage experiences while navigating work remains sparsely researched. Available literature, and preliminary research from my Ph.D., reveal stark findings, notably that women commonly conceal miscarriage at work, and when they do disclose, they often experience inconsistent support, or none at all. Minimization, and even discriminatory practice, are commonly witnessed (including inappropriate absence reporting, formal warnings, jeopardization of promotional opportunities, and redundancy). Effective support is often due to empathetic line managers, who sometimes have first-hand experience. Partners are commonly assigned to the “supporter role”, resulting in insufficient leave and support. The absence of formal initiatives, including policy and training, exacerbate the issue. Workplaces that fail to address miscarriage likely face reduced engagement and productivity, and increased absenteeism, presenteeism, and staff turnover. Key recommendations are presented, emphasizing the need for organizations to (i) implement a pregnancy loss policy; (ii) train managers, HR, and colleagues; (iii) provide specialist support; and (iv) tackle pro-natal cultures. Avenues for future research are explored, notably the need to adopt an intersectional lens, and to obtain management/HR and partner perspectives.