Influences of Women's Empowerment on Health Across Generations in Bangladesh

描述（由申请人提供）：这项研究的目的是加深对社会文化过程的理解，通过这些过程，妇女的赋权影响到后代妇女的健康，或者相反，根据具体情况，通过这些过程可以挫败跨代影响。如果赋予妇女权力确实是一个有可能影响健康和社会结果的重要因素，那么应该有可能看到赋予妇女权力的影响随着时间的推移而扩大，并在几代人之间产生共鸣，特别是在家庭内部？然而，很少有研究对此进行检验。该研究解决了关于赋予妇女权力对健康的重要性的文献在理论和方法上的差距。它将扩展丰富的现有数据体的效用，并产生一个在时间深度、空间宽度以及调查和定性数据的整合方面不同寻常的数据集。它将采用1994年和2002年对孟加拉国六个农村的调查数据，并在妇女分样本中重复这些调查，以提供在妇女赋权研究中罕见的纵向观点。将对两种类型的女性进行深入的人种学访谈：1)在主要研究地点以外结婚的年轻女性，这一人群通常会在社区研究中丢失；还有他们的母亲和婆婆；2)嫁到主要研究地点的年轻新娘，她们的婆婆和母亲（将在她们自己居住的村庄进行追踪和采访）。还将采访年轻妇女的丈夫和公公的子样本，以提供男性观点。在长期的研究地点进行这项研究将有助于我们了解孟加拉国农村环境中不断变化的机遇和制约因素，这些因素影响到妇女对其女儿和儿媳的战略和决定。这项研究将审查赋予妇女权力对影响妇女健康和福祉的两个密切相关的结果的影响：结婚年龄和开始生育年龄。女孩早婚早育会给年轻母亲及其婴儿带来一系列负面的社会和健康后果，并导致人口迅速增长。研究地点孟加拉国是仅次于尼日尔的世界上少女新娘比例最高的国家，根据2004年的全国调查数据，68%的女孩在18岁之前结婚。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The purpose of this research is to increase understanding of the socio-cultural processes through which women's empowerment affects the health of subsequent generations of women, or, conversely, the processes through which the cross-generational influence may be thwarted, as the case may be. If women's empowerment is truly an important factor with the potential to influence health and social outcomes, then it should be possible to see the effects of empowerment amplify over time and resonate across generations, especially within the family? Yet few studies have examined this. The study addresses both theoretical and methodological gaps in the literature on the significance of women's empowerment on health. It will extend the utility of a rich existing body of data and produce a data set unusual in its temporal depth, its spatial breadth, and its integration of survey and qualitative data. It will employ survey data from 1994 and 2002 from six villages in rural Bangladesh and repeat the surveys among sub samples of women to provide a longitudinal perspective rare in studies of women's empowerment. In-depth, ethnographic interviews will be conducted with two types of triads of women: 1) young women who married outside of the primary study sites, a population normally lost to community studies; and their mothers and mothers-in-law; 2) young brides who married into the primary study sites, their mothers-in-law and their mothers (who will be traced and interviewed in their own villages of residence). Sub-samples of the young women's husbands and fathers-in-law will also be interviewed to provide male perspectives. Locating the study in longstanding research sites will help us to understand the evolving constellation of opportunities and constraints in the rural Bangladesh environment that influence women's strategies and decisions concerning their daughters and daughters-in-law. The study will examine the influence of women's empowerment on two closely-related outcomes influencing women's health and well-being: age at marriage and age at initiation of childbearing. Early marriage and childbearing among girls is associated with a wide range of negative social and health consequences for young mothers and their infants, and contributes to rapid population growth. The research site, Bangladesh, is second only to Niger as having the highest percentage of adolescent brides in the world, with 68% of girls being married by age 18, according to national survey data from 2004.