Understanding gendered influences on women's reproductive health in Pakistan: Moving beyond the autonomy paradigm
Understanding gendered influences on women's reproductive health in Pakistan: Moving beyond the autonomy paradigm
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DOI：
10.1016/j.socscimed.2009.01.025
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发表时间：
2009-04-01
影响因子：
5.4
通讯作者：
Salway, Sarah
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Mumtaz, Zubia;Salway, Sarah
最近的研究和政策讨论普遍认为，发展中国家妇女自主权有限是改善其生殖健康的主要障碍。然而，很少有人质疑妇女自主权的概念在概念上是否适当或是否有助于理解妇女生殖健康的决定因素、有效的政策制定或方案设计。本文利用2001年的民族志数据，包括社会绘图练习、日常生活观察、访谈、个案研究和焦点小组讨论，提请注意巴基斯坦旁遮普农村妇女生活中的性别社会、文化、经济和政治现实与妇女自主权概念之间的不一致。这些不足之处包括：这一概念不适当地强调妇女的独立自主行动;对男子和男子气概缺乏关注;无视性别关系和性别不平等的多方面构成;错误地假设接受生殖健康服务是自主的指标;以及未能探讨种姓、阶级或社会经济地位等其他不利因素的相互作用。本文呼吁采用替代的、更细致入微的理论方法来概念化性别不平等，以增强我们对巴基斯坦妇女生殖健康的了解。在何种程度上，我们的论点可能是相关的更广泛的南亚背景下，妇女的生活在世界其他地区，也进行了讨论。(C)2009爱思唯尔有限公司保留所有权利。
Recent research and policy discourse commonly view the limited autonomy of women in developing countries as a key barrier to improvements in their reproductive health. Rarely, however, is the notion of women's autonomy interrogated for its conceptual adequacy or usefulness for understanding the determinants of women's reproductive health, effective policy formulation or program design. Using ethnographic data from 2001, including social mapping exercises, observation of daily life, interviews, case studies and focus group discussions, this paper draws attention to the incongruities between the concept of women's autonomy and the gendered social, cultural, economic and political realities of women's lives in rural Punjab, Pakistan. These inadequacies include: the concept's undue emphasis on women's independent, autonomous action; a lack of attention to men and masculinities; a disregard for the multi-sited constitution of gender relations and gender inequality: an erroneous assumption that uptake of reproductive health services is an indicator of autonomy; and a failure to explore the interplay of other axes of disadvantage such as caste, class or socio-economic position. This paper calls for alternative, more nuanced, theoretical approaches for conceptualizing gender inequalities in order to enhance our understanding of women's reproductive wellbeing in Pakistan. The extent to which our arguments may be relevant to the wider South Asian context, and women's lives in other parts of the world, is also discussed. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.