Female Autonomy Research Articles

Women’s Perception and Attitude towards Male Dominancy and Controlling Behaviors

Introduction/Background: The study was conducted in urban Karachi, Pakistan to investigate women’s perceptions and attitudes towards male dominancy, female autonomy, and controlling behavior of husbands. Method: This was investigated in a population based study with a cross-sectional design, involving married women aged 25 to 60 years. A Structured questionnaire developed by World Health Organisation (WHO) on violence was used. Community midwives interviewed these married women living in pre-selected low, middle and upper socio-economic areas of urban Karachi, Pakistan. Findings: This study revealed women’s overall perception regarding male dominancy and controlling behavior and highlighted this attitude, as being acceptable to women. It was found that 96.7% (n=734) of females perceived their husband as authority figure in the family and 99.2% (n=753) consider themselves as good wives by being obedient to their husbands. Not only this, 88.9% (n=675) females perceived performing sex unwillingly with their husbands as an obligation. Conclusion: Perceptions of women regarding gender discrimination and male dominancy play a vital role in accepting gender discrimination. This study identified the declining status of women as compared to men in marital life due to various socio-cultural and religious beliefs, which promote controlling behaviour by the male partner. This is the result of learned behaviour and social norms in a patriarchal society adapted by women.

Access to Child Health Care, Medical Treatment of Sick Children and Childhood Mortality Relationships in Kenya

Child health care factors such as medical treatment of sick children have direct and indirect effect on childhood mortality. Through international cooperation, a number of countries including Kenya have gathered information on provision of child health services at facility level from periodic Service Provision Assessment (SPA) surveys. Kenya has also gathered information on medical treatment of sick children at household level from periodic Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). However, establishing how health care information in the SPA surveys relates to childhood mortality and also how these factors relate to medical treatment of sick children in the DHS has been constrained by differences in sample designs of the surveys. This study deployed a fstrategy of constructing community level variables derived from the SPA survey data and incorporated them into DHS data which served as the main data source. The SPA and DHS sampling designs for Kenya allow computation of stable estimates of regional demographic and health service indicators at provincial level. This study analyzed information gathered from 690 health facilities in 2010 SPA and 6079 births born less than 60 months from 2008/09 DHS. The study found that access to child health services, waiting time before service in facility and time to the nearest referral facility were significant facilitating factors for medical treatment of sick children. The study also established that waiting time before service in facility was the only access to health care factor which had a significant effect on childhood mortality when HIV prevalence was excluded in the analysis. However, the significance of waiting time before service diminished with inclusion of HIV prevalence. Further research is required to refine definition and measurement for child health care variable on female autonomy.

Eliza Wharton’s Scraps of Writing: Dissipation and Fragmentation in The Coquette

THIS HUMBLE STONE, IN MEMORY OF ELIZA WHARTON, IS INSCRIBED BY HER WEEPING FRIENDS, TO WHOM SHE ENDEARED HERSELF BY UNCOMMON TENDERNESS AND AFFECTION. ENDOWED WITH SUPERIOR ACQUIREMENTS, SHE WAS STILL MORE DISTINGUISHED BY HUMILITY AND BENEVOLENCE. LET CANDOR THROW A VEIL OVER HER FRAILTIES, FOR GREAT WAS HER CHARITY TO OTHERS. SHE SUSTAINED THE LAST PAINFUL SCENE, FAR FROM EVERY FRIEND; AND EXHIBITED AN EXAMPLE OF CALM RESIGNATION. HER DEPARTURE WAS ON THE 25TH DAY OF JULY, A.D.--, IN THE 37TH YEAR OF HER AGE, AND THE TEARS OF STRANGERS WATERED HER GRAVE The engraved tombstone of Eliza Wharton offers readers of The Coquette a brief moral for her tale of gaiety and seduction. Reproduced in the last letter of Hannah Webster Foster's 1797 epistolary novel, the tombstone closes the narrative with a heavy-handed attempt by Eliza's friends to communicate a final lesson. This record of Eliza's life and death provides narrative, emotional, and instructive closure for one of the most affectively provocative records of seduction in the late eighteenth century. Eliza's friends emphasize her honorable character, the superior acquirements, and uncommon tenderness that distinguish her; the inscription provides a well-intentioned perspective, but the commemoration also makes Eliza's life legible according to commonplace didactic and sentimental conventions (169). (1) In contrast, near the end of her life Eliza moves herself out of the spotlight and communicates using fragments of writing that include partial letters, abbreviated messages, and miscellaneous reflections (162). After Reverend Boyer rejects Eliza's offer of love and Major Sanford successfully seduces her (a seduction concealed from Eliza's correspondents), she further conceals herself via her silence, her self-imposed social alienation, and her retreat from day-to-day interactions. Eliza's subsequent fragmented writings diverge from the sentimental discourse--exemplified by the description on the tombstone--that constructs her experiences as open and comprehensible. Throughout The Coquette, Foster explores how Eliza absents herself from a legible epistolary network as a result of her community's relentless persecution. Even though I begin the essay by presenting the inscription of Eliza's friends, I will attempt to give Eliza a burial that conforms to her own hidden and fragmented self-representations. It is not only Eliza's friends who injure her memory. By disregarding Foster's criticism of the totalizing perspective of the tombstone, literary critics continue to reenact the community's problematic interpretive methods in their scholarship. Two main trajectories govern criticism on The Coquette; one argues for the novel's insistence on female autonomy, while the other approach argues for Foster's codification of conservative gender relations. Both these approaches share the mistake of historical anachronism, since they seek to locate Eliza at the opening of a long, later history of gender relations and feminism. The former approach--taken by critics like Sharon M. Harris, Claire C. Pettengill, and C. Leiren Mower--lauds female self-mastery as the primary lesson of Eliza's downfall (Mower 336). (2) According to these critics, Eliza's withdrawal from social relations at the end of the novel functions as an emancipatory escape that transcendently looks from late eighteenth-century history to the larger ideology of feminism in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Ironically, this approach to the novel threatens to replicate the constrictive gender ideologies that initially lead to Eliza's effacement as the plot progresses; by reading self-mastery into Eliza's absence, self-negation, and fragmentation, these critics affirm and impose their own version of the history of women's rights without looking at the way Foster depicts Eliza's response to the traumatic events of her life. Taking Eliza's withdrawal from the gaiety of her social and family life as a radical feminist claim, particularly without looking at the form of Eliza's protest, this sort of reading fails to take her story at face value. …

Seeking Female Sexual Emancipation and the Writing of Women's History

One of Louise Tilly's most widely cited articles was “Women's Work and European Fertility Patterns” (1976), coauthored with Joan Scott and Miriam Cohen. The subject of the article was a major increase in female illegitimacy at the time of the Industrial Revolution, which Tilly regarded as an instance of female vulnerability caused by isolation and urban migration. Surveys of recent writings by American and British historians about this subject suggest the impact of contemporary attitudes toward female sexual autonomy. This literature offers a far more positive portrait of the causes and consequences of female illegitimacy than Tilly provided.

Vulnerability of women living with HIV/aids

Objective outline the profile of women living with the human immunodeficiency virus/aids in interior cities in São Paulo State, in the attempt to identify characteristics related to individual, social and programmatic vulnerability and to analyze the conditions in which they discovered their serological status. Method between October 2008 and December 2010, a cross-sectional study was undertaken with 184 women attended at a specialized service. The data were collected through an interview and gynecological test, including the collection of samples for the etiological diagnosis of sexually transmissible conditions. Results the women were predominantly white, between 30 and 49 years of age, lived with a partner, had a low education level, multiple sexual partners across the lifetime and unsafe sexual practices. The prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases corresponded to 87.0%. Conclusion the study suggests the need to offer gynecological care in specialized services and the accomplishment of multiprofessional actions to reinforce the female autonomy in protective decision making.

Postfeminist possibilities: unpacking the paradoxical performances of heterosexualized femininity in club spaces

One of the ways in which the heterosexualization of women's bodies is made apparent is through the blatant promotion of Ladies' Night at night clubs. These are typically weekly events, of which women are granted complimentary entry by club operators. Ladies' Night is thus popularly construed as a time and space in which men can gain access to many ‘heterosexy’ female bodies. The deliberate deployment of specific kinds of (post)feminine bodies and subjectivities—slim, savvy, and sassy—in club promotional material is often couched in discourses that highlight female expression, consumption, and autonomy. Such a celebratory rhetoric of women as empowered actors seems to suggest that traditional gendered expectations of women as self-reserved, timid and vulnerable to sexual aggression are archaic and are no longer valid. In light of this, I investigate how women negotiate a postfeminist terrain within the context of Singapore's night clubbing scene. By employing qualitative methods such as in-depth interviews, ethnographic work, and discourse analysis, I argue that clubs are paradoxical spaces for performing gendered and (hetero)sexualized selves that vacillate between affirming and subverting heteropatriarchal regimes. In so doing, this paper hopes to contribute to the scholarship on feminist geography by bringing recent debates on postfeminism into a productive conversation with the literature on (hetero)sexuality and space.

Autonomy and efficiency. An experiment on household decisions in two regions of India

Dyson and Moore (1983) posit that women in South India enjoy relatively more agency than in the North. Their conclusions have become part of the standard picture of Indian rural society. In this paper, using experimental data we examine the implications of the regional contrast in female autonomy for the efficiency of family decision-making. With a sample of 1200 couples (one rural and one urban area in the North (Uttar Pradesh) and one rural area in the South (Tamil Nadu)), we find continuing significant differences between North and South in the nature of marital behaviour. In our experiments we see large-scale and robust evidence of inefficiency and hiding of assets when possible. Men invest more and are more generous to their partners. Women are more willing to invest in a common pool when their income is earned through working and when assets are publicly observable. There are differences between responses to treatment but the key and striking difference between the North and the South is that in both rural and urban sites in the North household efficiency is considerably greater than in the South.

On Their Own? A Study of Independent Versus Partner-Related Migration from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Senegal

This paper focuses on the heterogeneity of female mobility and investigates whether human and social capital play different roles in women's independent versus spousal reunification migration. Using longitudinal data from a recent survey on migration between Africa and Europe, we compare the drivers of mobility of Congolese and Senegalese women. Based on discrete-time hazard models, we find that education and access to migrant networks are especially important in the likelihood of moving independently of a partner. Furthermore, different types of ties (excluding the migrant partner) are influential in the two forms of mobility. Female networks play a crucial role in independent migration but are less instrumental in triggering reunification. The differences between the two types of moves are however, more accentuated in Senegal than in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We relate this to the more rigid patriarchal norms restricting female autonomy in Senegal, both in terms of mobility and economic activity.

The clitoris diaries: La donna clitoridea, feminine authenticity, and the phallic allegory of Carla Lonzi’s radical feminism

Radical feminist Carla Lonzi is regarded as a founding mother of Italian feminism in the early 1970s. Italian feminists look at her diaries and pamphlets as historical testimony, or as tools of self-identification. Very little work engages Lonzi’s feminist thought in its critique of psychoanalytic constructs of female sexuality, such as the forced sexual coincidence between vaginal sexuality and masculine pleasure. While reappropriating the clitoris as the site of female autonomy, Lonzi invents the ‘donna clitoridea,’ whose authenticity opposes heteronormativity. This article examines Lonzi’s theory of the clitoris and the donna clitoridea, arguing that Lonzi’s clitoris is not so much a site of pleasurable authenticity, but a phallic instrument of domination among women.

Factory ‘nuns’: the ethnicization of migrant labor in the making of Tibetan carpets

Many debates over migrant labor politics in contemporary China rely upon essentialist notions of ethnic identity. In contrast, I identify migrant labor politics as transnational processes through which women migrants from rural Tibet become ethnic workers. Drawing on post-colonial theories of ethnicity and on feminist literature on global capitalism, this article analyzes the uses of migrant laborers in a globalizing Tibetan carpet industry. First, I investigate the making of Tibetan carpets and the essentialist construction of ‘carpet weavers’ employed by Tibetan–Nepalese carpet factory owners, carpet dealers in New York City, and various participants in Lhasa, including party cadres, international non-government organizations (NGOs), and overseas investors. I argue that the functioning of the international carpet business relies upon the ethnicization of migrant labor, in which labor subjugation involves creating ethnic subjects and ethnicized boundaries. This form of labor commodification is driven by both an economic logic and a moral imperative for preserving or regenerating ‘ethnic culture.’ Second, through the lens of gender, I look closely at the ethnicization of migrant labor in post-socialist Lhasa, analyzing its significance for the labor force in the carpet industry. The women carpet weavers, who mostly come from Tibet's rural areas, I found, strive to reconcile their desires for female autonomy with labor positions that reduce them to strangers in the city. Some women attempt to overcome their experiences of alienation while actively engaging in the reproduction of the patriarchal family as well as in labor hierarchies at work.

Ilona Bell Elizabeth I: The Voice of a MonarchElizabeth I: The Voice of a Monarch. Ilona Bell. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Pp. xvi+207.

<i>Ilona Bell</i> Elizabeth I: The Voice of a Monarch<i>Elizabeth I: The Voice of a Monarch</i>. Ilona Bell. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Pp. xvi+207.

Community Characteristics of Female Autonomy, Status and Adolescent ChildbearingRelated Behaviour: Demographic Health Survey Nicaragua 1998 and 2001

Community Characteristics of Female Autonomy, Status and Adolescent ChildbearingRelated Behaviour: Demographic Health Survey Nicaragua 1998 and 2001

Patriarchy and fertility in Albania

AbstractBACKGROUNDTheories of fertility collapse in the post-socialist era imply a decline in the moral primacy of traditional social institutions. Yet gender inequality actually increased in many countries, and there is a scarcity of empirical evidence for the role played by traditional social institutions in reproductive decision-making.OBJECTIVEWe investigate whether patriarchal institutions sustained the fertility levels in Albania. The geography of marriage and family enlargement is related to the importance of patriarchy in kinship organisation and in the public sphere. To account for this spatial relationship we test the evidence for different pathways in patriarchal influence on reproductive decision-making including social effects, socialisation in patriarchal ideals, and the promotion of male fertility.METHODWe reconstruct reproductive histories from the 2001 Census and use data on attitudes and fertility intentions from the Reproductive and Health Survey 2002. Multilevel logistic regressions on marriage and (the intention of) higher order births are used.RESULTSA majority of women endorsed patriarchal ideals and fertility transition was less advanced in more patriarchal municipalities. Patriarchal kinship organisation promoted early marriages and high fertility, which is shown to be achieved by social learning among peers and intergenerational social influences respectively, as well as by women's socialisation and a stopping behaviour in childbearing dominated by son-preference. Although gender inequality in the public sphere has also sustained the level of fertility and decreased the risk of marriage, it was not accounted for by these pathways of patriarchal influence.CONCLUSIONDespite Albania's gradual opening to the world in a period of economic and political crisis, traditional social institutions remain important for family behaviours.(ProQuest: ... denotes formula omitted.)1. IntroductionA sharp decline in fertility during the post-socialist transition has been documented in Europe and the former Soviet Union with an analytical focus on the effects of economic crisis along with restructuring and ideational change (Billingsley 2010; Philipov and Dorbritz 2003; Sobotka 2003). Fertility limitation was initiated by the adverse material and social consequences of the crisis, and the onset of childbearing was further postponed when the economic and political situation stabilized. However, fertility trends in countries which have experienced social upheaval or war have highlighted the importance of social and cultural context for the in which family behaviours respond. Young and stable ages at marriage, as well as fluctuating or increasing fertility, have indeed been attributed to a return to traditional values (Clifford, Falkingham, and Hinde 2009; Dommaraju and Agadjanian 2008; Lerch 2013a).This is congruent with the decline in gender equality observed in many countries (UNDP and LSE 2007). Women paid heavily for the costs of the transition as they were affected by lower social transfers and high levels of unemployment. In the Western Balkans, as elsewhere in the post-socialist era, women retreated en masse from the labour market and the political sphere (Brunnbauer 2004; UNIFEM 2006). But there is a scarcity of empirical evidence for the role played by traditional social institutions in reproductive decision-making. Most evidence is only indirect. In Moldova, a lack of female autonomy increased fertility intentions (Ryabov 2010) whereas in Bulgaria, crisis-driven constraints on the onset of childbearing were mediated by social capital and normative pressures to become a mother (Billari, Philipov, and Testa 2009; Philipov, Speder, and Billari 2006). According to Buhler's (2008) analysis of Bulgarian fertility, culturally-specific perceptions of the structural value of children for parents sustain the level of childbearing because it may change their social networks in an advantageous way (Buhler 2008: 572). …

Sexuality in Europe: A Twentieth-Century History, by Dagmar Herzog

Since the 1980s, the history of sexuality has boomed, making it possible to give an overview of the subject, for example the six-volume A Cultural History of Sexuality (2011), edited by Julie Peakman, which covered Western history from the Ancients to the modern day. More specialised books and more general works based on local studies have also appeared. In this latter category, we now have the present volume by Dagmar Herzog, illustrated, but at 230 pages a slim volume considering the breadth of the topic. But, notwithstanding her coverage of dozens of countries over a hundred years in a single volume, the book is a success and very balanced. In the introduction Herzog states that her main subjects are contraception, the greater acceptance of homosexual rights and premarital sex, the growing importance of sex in marriage, the stimulation of desire by advertising and pornography, the relaxation of church teachings on sexual morality and the decline of the authority of churches in such matters, and a greater appreciation of female sexual autonomy. She does all this and more, as there are also detailed discussions of prostitution, abortion, masturbation and sexual variation. It is not simply a story of sexual progress. Herzog identifies three central themes: recurrent backlashes against liberalisation, the question of what sexual freedom should mean, and the tensions between sexuality as a source of pleasure as well as of pain and misery. She underlines the importance of political processes, and the role of governments, popular values and social movements in formulating erotic values and creating sexual space.

Travel time to maternity care and its effect on utilization in rural Ghana: A multilevel analysis

Rates of neonatal and maternal mortality are high in Ghana. In-facility delivery and other maternal services could reduce this burden, yet utilization rates of key maternal services are relatively low, especially in rural areas. We tested a theoretical implication that travel time negatively affects the use of in-facility delivery and other maternal services. Empirically, we used geospatial techniques to estimate travel times between populations and health facilities. To account for uncertainty in Ghana Demographic and Health Survey cluster locations, we adopted a novel approach of treating the location selection as an imputation problem. We estimated a multilevel random-intercept logistic regression model. For rural households, we found that travel time had a significant effect on the likelihood of in-facility delivery and antenatal care visits, holding constant education, wealth, maternal age, facility capacity, female autonomy, and the season of birth. In contrast, a facility's capacity to provide sophisticated maternity care had no detectable effect on utilization. As the Ghanaian health network expands, our results suggest that increasing the availability of basic obstetric services and improving transport infrastructure may be important interventions.

Mother's autonomy: impact on the quality of children's healthcare in India

Given the poor condition of children's health in developing countries, this article seeks to examine two hypotheses concerning healthcare for children. First, does mother's autonomy influence the quality of child healthcare and, second, which is related to the first, whether mother's autonomy reduces the apparent gender bias in child healthcare. Using household survey data from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in India the article finds that for the most part as the mother's autonomy (measured several different ways) increases, the quality of care for children improves. The results also indicate that gender bias exists in the provision of quality healthcare for children. Male children generally receive better quality care. However, for several measures of female autonomy, an increase in such autonomy reduces the bias. The results of this analysis have important policy implications and provide additional insight into the state of affairs of children's health in rural India.

The Shadow of Indebtedness: Bridewealth and Norms Constraining Female Reproductive Autonomy

Bridewealth is fundamental to marriage in Africa. Anthropological research provides substantial information regarding characteristics of the bridewealth transaction, but scholars and policymakers know little about its consequences for women in contemporary Africa. We argue that the payment of bridewealth strengthens normative constraints on women’s autonomy in the reproductive domain. We test and find support for our argument using a unique vignette experiment conducted with rural women in the Volta Region of Ghana.

Socio-economic and Demographic Differentials of Contraceptive Usage in Indian States: A Study Based on NFHS Data

This study aims to investigate the differentials of contraceptive use in two regions of the Indian sub- continent, namely, Empowered Actions Group (EAG) 1 states and South Indian states by some socio-economic and demographic variables among the currently married women aged 20-49. To find out the differentials of contraceptive use between the two regions, Multiple Classification Analysis (MCA) was applied to National Family Health Survey (NFHS 3) data using some socio-economic and demographic variables. Of the socio-economic and demogra phic factors, wealth status of household, number of living children, exposure to media, female autonomy and ethnicity were found to be more important in determining the usage of contraception of the women. Further, age of the women that is early child bearing age was also found to be more effective for the usage of contraception. Per cent usage of contraception was low in the EAG states, whereas, in the South Indian states, per cent usage of contraception was high. The study shows that prevalence of modern contraception was high in South Indian states, on the other hand, prevalence of traditional contraception was high in the EAG states.

Becoming (M)other: Reflectivity in Le Journal des Demoiselles

This article explores the complex positioning of Jeanne-Justine Fouqueau de Pussy (J.J.), editor-in-chief and columnist for the long-running Journal des Demoiselles (1833–96), vis-à-vis the dominant ideology of the feminine in nineteenth-century France. From 1833 to her retirement in 1853, J.J., a self-supporting and mature divorcée living alone, presented herself as a jeune fille who lived at home with her parents and corresponded about the latest fashions and trends with an anonymous and imaginary reader. This article argues that, in spite of the journal’s markedly conservative tenor as a vehicle for promoting respectable femininity and its explicit aim to prepare young girls for bourgeois marriage, the columns of its principal spokeswoman can be read as the expression of an alternative agenda centred in female sociability and autonomy. Analysing fashion plates and sewing patterns alongside sample columns from the twenty-year span of J.J.’s ‘Correspondance’, the article traces the idea of literal and figurative ‘reflectivity’ to investigate J.J.’s mixing of surface and subtextual messages.

FEMALE AUTONOMY IN RURAL NORTH INDIA: IMPACT OF ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, AND POLITICAL FACTORS

This paper attempts to answer a number of questions concerning factors which influence female autonomy as measured by mobility in rural north India (Uttar Pradesh). It is hypothesized that a female autonomy outside the home is influenced by social, economic, and political factors. The results of the empirical analysis indicate that the availability of certain types of infrastructure along with off-farm employment opportunities at the village level have a positive influence on female autonomy. In terms of the political structure of local government, there is no evidence to support the notion that having a female Pradhan will result in greater female autonomy. However, female autonomy is enhanced if the Pradhan is from a scheduled caste and/or the Pradhan has significant political experience. Data for the 2000s shows improvements in female autonomy and female participation in local government in Uttar Pradesh. However, significant challenges continue to remain. The results have important policy implications.