Women in development : issues for economic and sector analysis

This paper highlights issues and action plans concerning women in economic and sector analysis and in project design. The paper focuses on the majority of women who are poor. It emphasizes measures to include women in development that contribute to economic performance, poverty reduction, slower population growth, and other broad development objectives. The paper concludes that women already contribute far more economically than is usually recognized. By expanding women's economic choices, output and efficiency can be increased by enabling women to find their true comparative advantage. Women also tend to be disproportionately represented among the poor, so economic adjustment programs should deliberately take into consideration women's special needs and constraints. The same set of prices on agricultural products may also have a different incentive effect on men and women. With labor markets often segmented by gender, women are typically concentrated in fewer more traditional, less remunerative lines of work. Finally, improving education of women is probably the easiest program to target, but key health and family planning needs include stronger prenatal screening and care, help with delivery and a reduction of anemia.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Primary Education,Population&Development,Environmental Economics&Policies

Uneven progress in reducing exposure to violence at home for New Zealand adolescents 2001–2012: a nationally representative cross‐sectional survey series

Objective: To explore trends, and identify risk factors, that may explain changes in adolescent exposure to family violence over time.Methods: Data for this study was drawn from the Youth 2000 series of cross‐sectional surveys, carried out with New Zealand high school students in 2001, 2007 and 2012. Latent class analysis was used to understand different patterns of exposure to multiple risks for witnessing violence at home among adolescents.Results: Across all time periods, there was no change in witnessing emotional violence and a slight decline in witnessing physical violence at home. However, significant differences were noted between 2001 and 2007, and 2007 and 2012, in the proportion of adolescents who reported witnessing emotional and physical violence. Four latent classes were identified in the study sample; these were characterised by respondents' ethnicity, concerns about family relationships, food security and alcohol consumption. For two groups (characterised by food security, positive relationships and lower exposure to physical violence), there was a reduction in the proportion of respondents who witnessed physical violence but an increase in the proportion who witnessed emotional violence between 2001 and 2012. For the two groups characterised by poorer food security and higher exposure to physical violence, there were no changes in witnessing of physical violence in the home.Implications for public health: In addition to strategies directly aimed at violence, policies are needed to address key predictors of violence exposure such as social disparities, financial stress and alcohol use. These social determinants of health cannot be ignored