The small miracle

Although the standard argument for distributing birth control pills throughout the Third World is that they are less dangerous than pregnancy or abortion, irregular use of the pill increases riks of both. The irregularity of use can be attributed to both poor delivery systems and side effects. Side effects occur because of poor screening and lack of alternative dosages. Because of the lower price of buying in bulk, family planning groups distribute only 1 kind of pill. The woman who experiences side effects, e.g. headache, dizziness, weight gain, depression, has no choice but to discontinue use. Few women are screened by having their blood pressure taken, therefore the pill exacerbates illness in those with circulation problems. Breast-feeding mothers who take the pill provide less sustenance from their breastmilk, which can increase infant mortality rates. In Bangladesh a USAID-funded study on contractive distribution found that the "trained" family planning workers did not know what advice to give a woman who missed her pill on 5 consecutive days, or what type of side effects might be anticipated, or how many days after the onset of menstruation a woman should begin the pill. A more level headed approach to delivery of contraceptives in developing countries is needed.     

Family-planning methods among the tribal population in south Gujarat: a case study of access and usage

The article explores knowledge and practices of family planning among the tribal population of south Gujarat, India. The authors examine the reasons for discontinuation and non-use of various modern contraceptive methods by tribals and draw contrasts with practices in the urban population. They consider the roles of women, family members, local leaders, and effective communication, along with NGOs and the private sector, and make recommendations for increasing access to and usage of various family-planning methods by the tribals.     

The decision makers

This is a report on family planning in 3 villages in India, Tanzania, and Bangladesh. The Indian and Tanzanian respondents favored large families and did not favor the practice of family planning because economic circumstances seemed to them to support the need for large families. The respondents in the Bangladesh villages realized that a large family could be an economic burden. There was some mention of rural health centers, primary health centers, and mobile matenal/child untis for the provision of health services to rural people. Knowledge regarding these services was not widespread or complete. Family planning education services must overcome the weight of ignorance, tradition, and misconceptions. The rural women in the Bangladesh villages observed were anxious to take oral contraceptives. Their need was for a regular source of supply, adequate education concerning the working of and possible side effects associated with pills, and proper medical supervision during their pill therapy.     

Bangladesh: where there's a pill there's a way

In exchange for the substantial foreign aid provided to it by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the government of Bangladesh has agreed to accept the Agency's population package. The government has agreed to accept AID-provided contraceptives and has set revolutionary fertility rate targets for the year 1985. To meet the scarcity of contraceptive clinics in rural areas, AID and Population Services International (PSI) have instituted social marketing in Bangladesh. This involves use of commercial distributors, e.g., cigarette dealers and local shopkeepers, for the distribution of condoms and oral contraceptives. The distributors are willing to participate because they make small but significant profits from the arrangement. It is feared that shopkeepers do not have the expertise to screen women who should not be given pills or to give counseling for prospective pill customers. This type of pill distribution could lead to dangers.     

Women in water management: the need for local planning

This article on women's role in water resource management is based on a paper delivered at a seminar organized at the Water and Land Management Institute in Anand, India, in 1994. The article reflects Family Planning International's (FPI) experience in community-based water resource development. Most analyses of village and household water management data exclude women's role. The reasons are identified as the lack of inclusion of women's thinking in land-development research and planning, the dominance of males in planning and consequent male assumptions made about women's work and use of water, the lack of valuation of the nonmonetary nature of women's relationship to water, and the ease of ignoring women. Women's roles that are obstacles to inclusion in research and planning are identified as the lack of effective women's lobbies, the undervaluation by women of their work, and the lack of professional recognition of women as potential users of water or spokespersons for more than their own self-interests as women. National water policies are shifting to community-based management because local authorities are in daily contact with users, of whom about 50% are women. Historically national policy shifted from attention to distribution of investments in the water sector to reorganization of water agencies and to building up the capacity of private or voluntary agencies. The local context allows for more efficient and effective responses to local conditions. Local institutions and groups are better equipped to solicit local participation. One primary lesson learned by FPI is that local water resource planning is very important in strengthening the economic and individual capacity of poor people in underdeveloped areas. FPI's experience in Mahesana, Banaskantha, and Sabarkantha in Gujarat state supports this lesson learned. Water resource development policies resulted in mixed outcomes, and national control has been inefficient and disrespectful to local authorities. Another obstacle in Gujarat to water resource development is identified as increased demand for public water services and inadequate provision of services due to remoteness of the area and financial limitations of central agencies. Infrastructure is poorly maintained.     

Toward a world population program

Problems facing the less developed countries in the field of family planning are inadequate funds, weak administration, insufficient personnel, and sometimes lack of governmental will. To close the "family planning gap," the gap between the number of married women who now have access to modern birth control techniques and the number who would use them if given the opportunity, in the less-developed world as a whole would cost an estimated $3 billion ($2 billion if the People's Republic of China is excluded). The author develops 8 national and international guidelines for the tackling of the population problem. Among other points the guidelines state that assistance to a country in family planning should be solely at the request of that country and that national assistance should be related maximally to the work of international organizations. The history of United States and international efforts to deal with the world population crisis are detailed. During 1962-1967 the United States and the United Nations created decisive policies granting family-planning assistance to less-developed countries. The author urges a world population program, directed by the U.N. and financed by a special fund of voluntary contributions, to increase U.N. and regional economic commission staffs concerned with family planning, develop training centers for family planning personnel, and develop pilot or demonstration projects to get national or regional programs under way.     

Availability ray

As Director of the Office of Population in the U.S. State Department, Dr. Ray Ravenholt is a controversial figure. In an interview with New Internationalist Dr. Ravenholt agrees that economic development will reduce family size in developing areas as it has in industrialized countries but the availability of contraception is of primary importance. He believes the U.S. should be training gynecologists from developing countries in modern methods of contraception, including sterilization operations, but he does not believe in involuntary sterilization or coercion. In Greenland, for example, the birth-rate fell from 48/1000 in 1964 to 19/1000 in 1977 because the Danish Health Minister introduced family planning. No coercion was used. Contraceptives were made available. Although he sees value in redistribution and equal distribution of resources, Dr. Ravenholt claims that if you make information and family planning services available you control population growth in advance of solving the resource distribution problem. In China, where a strong attempt has been made to distribute resources equally, a very powerful planned birth control program was found necessary. Politicians may argue that the U.S. should limit its consumption of resources but they are the same people who are working to emulate the same amount of consumption.     

Microfinance,wage employment and housework: a gender analysis

This paper examines the loan-use pattern of women involved in wage employment and their benefits from such loans in Bangladesh. The effects of wage employment on gender relations and how these women balance loan use, wage employment, and housework were also explored. The study was conducted among women enrolled in the Ayesha Abed Foundation (AAF) of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) in Jamalpur district, central Bangladesh. The AAF was established to generate employment and income for poor rural women. Data were gathered through survey, interviews, and focus-group discussions. Findings revealed that women wage earners avail themselves of the BRAC loans for consumption, asset accumulation, land purchase, and other productive purposes. About 53% of their loans were used by others and only 34 out of 341 women in the sample actually used the loans themselves. The loans were repaid by sewing or subsistence work, mainly in the subcenters (52%), through income from rickshaw pulling by their husbands (24%), and by selling vegetables, eggs, or milk. Furthermore, findings showed that the household work of women wage earners is generally taken up by other women in the family and has resulted in more men taking part in household responsibilities. In conclusion, wage employment plays an important factor in the promotion of the economic and social empowerment of women. Economic empowerment is observed in the greater degree of control women have over the money they earn. Social empowerment is manifested in the expanding mobility of women, whereby they are able to interact with other women and generate support systems.     

Re-thinking the integration of women in population development initiatives

This article argues that the integration of women in population development initiatives was largely the outcome of four overlapping historical events: the decolonisation of the South; the population ‘explosion’ following World War II; the momentous developments in contraceptive technology; and the re-emergence of women's movements in the North. These developments pushed women to the forefront of development initiatives, in part because of lingering assumptions that population size is associated with poverty. As a result, policies heavily focused on reducing birth rates largely eclipsed those concerned with improving women's sexual and reproductive health and rights.     

Gender lost and gender found: BRAC's Gender Quality Action-Learning Programme

This article describes and analyzes the BRAC Gender Quality Action-Learning (GQAL) Program. BRAC aims to bring about organizational change and improve program quality through issue analysis, action planning, and implementation with an understanding of gender. During the 1990s, BRAC increased the number of women staff and set up a women's committee. In 1993, it piloted a gender training program. By 1994, BRAC did not know what the real problems were. A needs assessment was carried out among 400 staff in various program types and levels and revealed 3 empowerment issues. An intuitive understanding did not translate into creative solutions. Staff preferred non-confrontation in dealing with women's subordination in the family and community. Staff strongly believed in training as a way of changing behavior and values. BRAC is an organization in transition. The goal is changing the relationship between men and women. BRAC needs multiple perspectives of men and women staff and primary stakeholders. BRAC is gendered. Quantitative targets must be balanced with quality improvements. Quality occurs by analyzing the process and outcomes of programs. The GQAL program and cycle began in 1995. The GQAL outcome was improved working and democratic relationships and more open communication. Success was based on, for example, a field-based learning intervention, followed by trained facilitators, and innovative and tested methodology. Constraints were the perceived lack of top management support in some programs, frequent transfers of staff, and natural disasters. The authors identify future issues.     

Communication for development: alive and kicking!

ABSTRACT

Communication has been a key element in the West's project of developing the Third World. In the one-and-a-half decades after Lerner's influential 1958 study of communication and development in the Middle East, communication researchers assumed that the introduction of media and certain types of educational, political, and economic information into a social system could transform individuals and societies from traditional to modern. Conceived as having fairly direct and powerful effects on Third World audiences, the media were seen as magic multipliers, able to accelerate and magnify the benefits of development.     

How gendered is Gender and Development? Culture,masculinity, and gender difference

Gender studies in general, and Gender and Development (GAD) in particular, through their belief in a cultural conditioning of gender behaviour, use the idea of ‘culture’ in a restrictive sense which perpetuates a conceptual difference between men and women, and also between First World and Third World women. There is a tendency among gender experts to magnify the difference between men and women, and categorise them into two radically different realms. This article argues for a gender project based on the idea of culture as lived experience. It approaches gender not as a category of exclusion but as a problematic construct that is constantly restructuring itself.     

Population: a new approach

Questionable assumptions are the basis of the prevailing view on population. It is assumed that rapid population growth is responsible for slums, pollution, poverty, unemployment, and underdevelopment, yet these asserted relationships have no proven scientific basis. Even rapid rates of population growth are not necessarily obstacles to economic development, but the present international economic policies of rich countries are. It also is claimed that population control programs are no substitute for other development assistance, but funds have skyrocketed and agencies mushroomed in the population field, while other development assistance has decreased. The world's economic system functions on the basis of producing short term profit for a few. Under this system, production is inevitably directed towards creating an artificial demand for increasingly useless objects, rather than meeting basic human needs. This leads in turn to wasteful methods of production which seriously harm the environment. The poor nations are essentially relegated to the role of purveyors of raw materials. Such industries as are set up are usually capital-intensive and based on Western technology, rather than labor-intensive. This impairs the ability of these nations to provide full employment and social services would would otherwise lead to lower fertility levels. Current efforts to influence birthrates are directed towards changing people's reproductive behavior. There is little reference to the social and economic factors which determine family size. Yet, it is these factors which will have to be influenced if family size is to be substantially altered. Family planning should be freely available to all, but it is the type of society which will actually determine whether or not people use family planning. The mose effective way to alter population variables is to alter societies so that their people have some hope in the future.     

Gender and democratization: Or what does democracy mean for women in the Third World?

The article argues that the ongoing process of democratization in the Third World affects both men and women significantly, though differentially. It examines the two major strands of democratic theory, representative and participative, to emphasize that both of these take for granted the division between the public and the private spheres. This division inhibits the mass participation of women in politics and therefore in the democratic processes affecting them. It further analyses the arguments made in the name of cultural specificity of Third World societies and the dilemmas that these pose for women in their struggle for democracy. It draws upon various case studies to examine the contradictory and often painful options that women of the Third World are faced with in any process of political change, including that of democratization. Through the case studies the article underscores the complex relationship between the state and civil society in the Third World and how women negotiate the boundaries of both. It concludes that the process of political democratization, though not an unproblematic transition, creates new opportunities for women to mobilize in their own various interests.     

突尼斯妇女法律地位浅析

突尼斯在保障妇女权益方面有丰富的经验。在维护妇女法律地位方面,突尼斯是非洲和阿拉伯国家中取得最大成就的国家之一。主要原因有三:第一是历史原因,突尼斯改革运动为社会解放和知识分子的意识形态变化奠定了良好基础。"凯鲁万婚约"的适用亦有利于国家独立以后执行一夫一妻制;第二是政治原因,妇女解放是突政府最重要的现代化与发展政策之一;第三是社会原因,20世纪80年代以来突尼斯妇女组织对妇女社会地位提高的推动作用。当前突尼斯面临的经济与社会问题可能对妇女现有地位构成一定的挑战。     

The Transition of the International Order and China's Role

The international order is built on the principles of sovereign equality,national interests,great powers and respect for human rights among others.International rivalry and cooperation have existed side by side over the past few centuries,while the foundations of an intemational order have solidified.We are now seeing a transition in the international order that requires new innovative ways of thinking.China is seen as the key driver of these changes because of its unique status,pattern of growth and future potential.China should embrace this historic opportunity and take on its obligations to contribute to the birth of a new modern international order.     

Fertile inventions: new contraceptive techniques

Research into contraception is producing new techniques that involve everything from vaccinations to nasal sprays. Steroids are the basis of the conventional contraceptive pill and much current research is on alternative ways of introducing the same drugs into the woman's reproductive system. Norplant is 1 approach. It involves implanting 6 tiny silicone-rubber tubes just beneath the skin of a woman's underarm. The tubes contain a drug, widely used as an ingredient of the contraceptive pill, which is slowly released from the tubes over a period of 5 years. It is understandable that much contraceptive research is focused on the womb. The brain, however, seems a strange place to be concerned with when trying to prevent conception. But it is the brain that controls a woman's ovulation by sending signals to the reproductive system via the pituitary gland. And now it is possible to synthesize chemicals which, when given in the form of a nasal spray, will inhibit ovulation by mimicking the brain's signals to the pituitary gland. It may even be possible to develop drugs which act directly on parts of the brain itself--a prospect we should be aware of, whether we would approve of it or not. There has been such an explosion of knowledge of the neural transmission systems that this may not be so far-fetched as it sounds. Research in China tends to concentrate more on naturally occurring substances--like a new form of female sterilization which involves not anesthetics or surgery but a substance called "mucilage"--1 of the ingredients of birds-nest soup. If mucilage is passed through the cervix into the fallopian tubes it causes them to block up and so prevents the passage of the ovum. There is a Western "high-tech" alternative to this, called methylcyanoacrylate--you might be more familiar with it as "superglue" or "crazy glue." Used carelessly it can stick your fingers together, but this tendency to join human tissues can be more productively used to block up the fallopian tubes. The Chinese are also looking at another natural substance as the basis of the possible "male pill." This is gossypol which occurs in cottonseed. A major reason why most research has been focused on contraception for women is that men present problems of quite a different order of magnitude. While a woman only ovulates once every 28 days or so, male sperm are produced continuously, with 200-400 million of them in each ejaculation. But drugs based on gossypol, which seems to have the effect of reducing the sperm count, may be the answer. Under the auspices of the World Health Organization, research on gossypol and other plants with contraceptive potential is now going on over all the world. Some 350 have been put under the microscope so far and about 30 look worth pursuing.     

FRAMING OF JACOB ZUMA AND POLYGAMY IN DIE BURGER (2008–2013)

ABSTRACT

The traditional practice of polygamy, whereby a person is married to more than one spouse at the same time, entered the public discourse in South Africa primarily through President Jacob Zuma's weddings in 2008, 2010 and 2012. This article aims to reflect the discussion of Zuma's polygamy in particularly the Afrikaans communities of South Africa from 2008 to 2013, as the Afrikaans language newspaper Die Burger targets this segment of the broader society. Drawing on framing theory, three major themes emerged from this analysis. First, writers in Die Burger want Jacob Zuma to be a modern head of state instead of a traditional man. Second, they believe that the particular cultural right to practise polygamy violates women's human rights. Third, they see Jacob Zuma and polygamy not as a private but as a public issue, since taxpayers are supporting his family financially.     

What's Special about Female Suicide Terrorism?

This study analyzes the interaction between the motivations of individual attackers and terrorist group strategies. To do so, I combine a quantitative analysis of all known suicide terrorist attacks between 1981 and July 2008 with a strategic account of why terrorist organizations employ female suicide terrorism (fst) and case studies of individual female attackers. I advance five central claims. First, I reveal the superior effectiveness of fst from the perspective of the groups that employ women. Second, I explain that terrorist groups increasingly enlist women as suicide attackers because of their higher effectiveness. Third, I demonstrate that terrorist groups adapt their discourse, catering to the specific individual motives of potential female suicide attackers in order to recruit them. Fourth, I show that female attackers are driven by the same general motives and circumstances that drive men. Furthermore, and in contrast to the existing literature, women attackers uphold, rather than eschew, their societies' norms for gender behavior. Attempts to transform these societies into gender-neutral polities are therefore destined to increase fst. Finally, I conclude that, unless target states adapt their defensive strategies, we should expect an increase in fst.     

Evaluating Israel's Strategy of Low-Intensity Warfare, 1949–2006

This study examines the strategic and tactical logic of Israel's limited uses of force against Arab states and against substate actors. It evaluates the effectiveness of these policies, and their political and strategic ramifications. The study is based on a historical survey of these policies and on quantitative analysis of a dataset of the use of limited force by Israel over the 1949–2003 period. The findings suggest, first, that limited force strategies were occasionally used to foster escalation. In other cases, the mismanagement of limited engagements resulted in inadvertent escalation to full-blown wars. Second, domestic political and social considerations had important effects on the nature and intensity of Israeli uses of limited force. Third, Israeli reliance on offensive strategies has not only consistently failed, but produced adverse military and diplomatic side effects. Defensive and preventive measures have shown a much greater degree of success. The study concludes that a combination of military and diplomatic measures produces far more effective results than strictly military ones.