Gender Equality In Access Research Articles

Inequality in access to coronary revascularization in Sweden

Objectives—To investigate social and gender equality in access to coronary revascularization for those treated for coronary heart disease in Sweden between 1991 and 2000.Design—All Swedish residents between 25 and 74 years old with a hospital stay for coronary heart disease were eligible for the study, in total about 153 000 persons. The Swedish Hospital Discharge Register from 1988 through 2000 was used to define the study population. Poisson regression analyses were used to estimate the effect of socio‐economic status on the likelihood for coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) within 2 years. In the analysis of gender differences, the likelihood for percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) was also included.Results—Males were 1.5 times more likely to undergo revascularization procedures than females even after adjusting for confounding factors and the fact that women are less eligible for interventions. The analyses also showed significant socio‐economic inequalities in access to CABG among men, but not among women.Conclusions—There are gender and socio‐economic inequalities in access to cardiac procedures in Sweden.

Women's Schooling and Child Care in the Demographic Transition: A Mexican Case Study

THE QUESTION OF HOW FEMALE SCHOOL ATTENDANCE influences fertility and child survival in developing countries has emerged as an important problem in the analysis of demographic change and the evaluation of health and population policies. An extensive research literature based on national surveys and censuses conducted in developing countries shows maternal schooling to be a highly consistent household-level predictor of reduced fertility and child mortality, even when other socioeconomic factors are controlled.' This has led to proposals for expanding female school enrollment as a means of facilitating future reductions in fertility and child mortality rates in those countries where they remain high-despite scant information on the processes through which these reductions would occur.2 Gender equality in access to schooling can be justified without reference to the consequences for health and population growth, let alone scientific analysis of the processes involved. But consideration of expanded opportunities for schooling as an instrument of health and population policy calls for a deeper understanding of how the formal education of women affects their reproductive and health behavior.3 The research reported in this article was designed to contribute to that understanding through community-level studies in Mexico. The robust and widespread associations found between women's schooling and demographic variables are at once extremely familiar and