Abortion in Canada: religious and ideological dimension's of women's attitudes

This paper examines a number of demographic and sociocultural factors (e.g., age, marital status, family size, religion, religious assiduity, sex-role ideology) as predictors of women's attitudes toward abortion, using data from the Canadian Fertility Survey of 1984. The findings suggest that women's abortion attitudes are to a greater extent based on ideological positions. It appears that anti-abortion stance affects those women who are religious, presumably by increasing the relationship between their general sex-role ideological stances and abortion attitudes. Abortion attitudes also vary according to a woman's education, her size, and province/region of residence.     

Authoritative knowledge and single women's unintentional pregnancies,abortions, adoption,and single motherhood: social stigma and structural violence

This article explores the sources of authoritative knowledge that shaped single, white, middle-class women's unintentional pregnancies and child-bearing decisions throughout five reproductive eras. Women who terminated a pregnancy were most influenced by their own personal needs and circumstances. birth mothers' decisions were based on external sources of knowledge, such as their mothers, social workers, and social pressures. In contrast, single mothers based their decision on instincts and their religious or moral beliefs. Reproductive policies further constrained and significantly shaped women's experiences. The social stigma associated with these forms of stratified maternity suggests that categorizing pregnant women by their marital status, or births as out-of-wedlock, reproduces the structural violence implicit to normative models of female sexuality and maternity. This mixed-method study included focus groups to determine the kinds of knowledge women considered authoritative, a mailed survey to quantify these identified sources, and one-on-one interviews to explore outcomes in depth.     

Reproductive strategies and Islamic discourse: Malian migrants negotiate everyday life in Paris, France

Approximately 37 thousand Malians currently reside in France as part of the West African diaspora. Primarily Muslim, both women and men confront challenges to their understandings of Islamic prohibitions and expectations, especially those addressing conjugal relations and reproduction. Biomedical policies generate marital conflicts and pose health dilemmas for women who face family and community pressures to reproduce but biomedical encouragement to limit childbearing. For many women, contraception represents a reprieve from repeated pregnancies and fatigue in spite of resistance from those who contest women's reproductive decisions as antithetical to Islam. French social workers play a particularly controversial role by introducing women to a discourse of women's rights that questions the authority of husbands and of religious doctrine. Women and men frame decisions and debate in diverse interpretations of Islam as they seek to manage the contradictions of everyday life and assert individual agency in the context of immigration and health politics.     

Between dialogue and contestation: gender, Islam, and the challenges of a Malian public sphere

This paper examines how Islam has become a widely used idiom in discussions about gender in Mali. It foregrounds ordinary Malians' and particularly women's reflexive engagements with broadly debated religious and political questions. Centred on a 2004 five-day conference on gender issues, this paper examines the forms of Muslim women's involvement in the Malian public sphere, some of the challenges these women encounter, and their discursive attempts to reconcile their emancipatory agendas with their identities as Muslims.  

Résumé

L'article analyse la façon dont l'islam est devenu un mot très employé dans des discussions portant sur le genre au Mali. Il sous-tend la réflexion des Maliens ordinaires, et en particulier des femmes, sur lesquestions religieuses et politiques les plus débattues. Centré sur une conférence de cinq jours qui s'est tenue en 2004 sur les questions de genre, l'auteur examine les formes d'engagement des femmes musulmanes dans la sphère publique malienne, quelques-unes des difficultés qu'elles rencontrent et leurs tentatives discursives de concilier leurs mots d'ordre d'émancipation et leurs identités de femmes musulmanes.     

Modernization,Sexual Risk-Taking,and Gynecological Morbidity among Bolivian Forager-Horticulturalists

Sexual risk-taking and reproductive morbidity are common among rapidly modernizing populations with little material wealth, limited schooling, minimal access to modern contraception and healthcare, and gendered inequalities in resource access that limit female autonomy in cohabiting relationships. Few studies have examined how modernization influences sexual risk-taking and reproductive health early in demographic transition. Tsimane are a natural fertility population of Bolivian forager-farmers; they are not urbanized, reside in small-scale villages, and lack public health infrastructure. We test whether modernization is associated with greater sexual risk-taking, report prevalence of gynecological morbidity (GM), and test whether modernization, sexual risk-taking and parity are associated with greater risk of GM. Data were collected from 2002–2010 using interviews, clinical exams, and laboratory analysis of cervical cells. We find opposing effects of modernization on both sexual risk-taking and risk of GM. Residential proximity to town and Spanish fluency are associated with greater likelihood of men’s infidelity, and with number of lifetime sexual partners for men and women. However, for women, literacy is associated with delayed sexual debut after controlling for town proximity. Fifty-five percent of women present at least one clinical indicator of GM (n = 377); 48% present inflammation of cervical cells, and in 11% the inflammation results from sexually transmitted infection (trichomoniasis). Despite having easier access to modern healthcare, women residing near town experience greater likelihood of cervical inflammation and trichomoniasis relative to women in remote villages; women who are fluent in Spanish are also more likely to present trichomoniasis relative to women with moderate or no fluency. However, literate women experience lower likelihood of trichomoniasis. Parity has no effect on risk of GM. Our results suggest a net increase in risk of reproductive morbidity among rapidly modernizing, resource-stressed populations.     

The communal and the sacred: women's worlds of ritual in Uzbekistan

This article analyses women's participation in life-cycle, religious, and propitiatory rituals in Uzbekistan against the background of the 'politicization' of custom under the Soviet regime and fluctuations in official policies towards Islam since the post-Soviet period. Despite changes in official discourse, the resilience of women's rituals may be explained in terms of their embeddedness in local notions of communal participation and their role in the day-to-day reproduction of communal life. In the post-Soviet period, ritual has become a site both for the assertion of authentic Uzbek identity and for the display of growing disparities in wealth and status through the medium of consumption, leading to propaganda campaigns against ostentation. Although the thinking behind these initiatives is very different from that of Soviet modernizers, they, too, place ritual life at the centre of Uzbek sociality and target women as the custodians of local custom.     

From Samburu Heirloom to New Age Artifact: The Cross-Cultural Consumption of Mporo Marriage Beads

Antique Venetian trade beads used in Samburu women's marriage necklaces ( mporo ) have recently undergone intense recommodif ication in the transnational trade bead market concurrent with their appropriation by Euro-American women in both religious and secular domains. The article offers duai ethnographies of this mporo bead in order to advance anthropological understandings of precious objects in the context of globalization. Samburu and Euro-American desires for the "same" bead have been both reciprocal and distinct: Whereas Samburu desires for and exchange of mporo beads have been rooted in Samburu cultural forms, Euro-American desires for the same bead are linked to a kind of "fictional inalienability" that is not embedded in Samburu social relations but is instead rich in spiritual associations imagined through Euro-American women's vague understandings of the bead's "original" African owners. [Keywords: material culture, globalization, United States, Kenya, pastoralists]     

Flora Nwapa and Oguta’s Lake Goddess

The home of Nigeria's renowned Marxist anthropologist, Ikenna Nzimiro, and of the country's ``first lady of letters,' Flora Nwapa, is Oguta, a sprawling commercial centre situated on Oguta Lake near the confluence of the rivers Niger and Urashi. Both authors have described their home town in their own diverging perspectives. While Nzimiro's account focused on the town's political organization and questions of state formation and authority, Flora Nwapa was a novelist concerned primarily with women's issues. She engaged her home town's custom and religious beliefs centring on the pre-eminent lake goddess, Ogbuide, in her quest to champion womanhood. This paper examines how the novelist took certain artistic liberties and critically deconstructed local custom in her cause to promote women. While Nwapa's primary concern was women's reproductive rights and welfare, she also cherished Oguta culture, voiced her critique with caution, and was increasingly critical of foreign intrusions.     

Modernization and childlessness among the governorates of the Arab Republic of Egypt, 1976

This paper examines the degree to which childlessness is influenced by levels of modernization among the governorates of the Arab Republic of Egypt. The data have been derived mainly from the 1976 Population and Housing Census of the Arab Republic of Egypt. The childlessness rates used are based on census data on number of children born to married women. In 1976, the higher the levels of modernization, the lower the rates of childlessness among women aged 30 and over, and the higher the rates of childlessness among women aged 20-30. The lower rates are found in and around Cairo, and some of the governorates with higher rates are in Upper Egypt. Of the 25 governorates, Suez has the lowest childlessness rate. To some degree, the patterns of childlessness may be affected by changing patterns in age-specific 1st marriage rates. The childlessness rates for the younger women in the Egyptian governorates are associated with some of the modernization variables. The findings suggest that childlessness among women aged 30 and older is mostly involuntary, but that for younger women it is partly voluntary. Increases in modernization among the Egyptian governorates should, therfore, result in net increases in rates of childlessness and net decreases in fertility. There are at least 3 statistically independent sources of variation in modernization which characterize the governorates of Egypt: factors that reflect structural development, female status, and health personnel.     

Wearing the veil: hijab,Islam and job qualifications as determinants of social attitudes towards immigrant women in Norway

Immigrant women are a particularly vulnerable part of the immigrant population. In this paper we analyse negative attitudes towards immigrant women in Norway. We focus on immigrant women’s formal job qualifications, their religious background and wearing of hijab – the headscarf sometimes used by Muslim women. Using survey-embedded experiments we are able to analyse the net effects on attitudes of job qualifications, Islamic religious background and the hijab. The results show that native population frequently has more negative views of Muslim women who wear a hijab. The negative effects of a hijab do not seem to be strongly reduced if a woman wearing it has higher education. With a single exception, the results also show that Muslim background in itself (i.e. without the hijab) does not have any strong effect on attitudes of the native population towards immigrant women.     

Menstrual cycle, pregnancy and oral contraceptive use alter attraction to apparent health in faces

Previous studies demonstrating changes in women's face preferences have emphasized increased attraction to cues to possible indirect benefits (e.g. heritable immunity to infection) that coincides with periods of high fertility (e.g. the late follicular phase of the menstrual cycle). By contrast, here we show that when choosing between composite faces with raised or lowered apparent health, women's preferences for faces that are perceived as healthy are (i) stronger during the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle than during the late follicular, fertile phase, (ii) stronger in pregnant women than in non-pregnant women and (iii) stronger in women using oral contraceptives than in women with natural menstrual cycles. Change in preference for male faces was greater for short- than long-term relationships. These findings indicate raised progesterone level is associated with increased attraction to facial cues associated with possible direct benefits (e.g. low risk of infection) and suggest that women's face preferences are influenced by adaptations that compensate for weakened immune system responses during pregnancy and reduce the risk of infection disrupting foetal development.     

God,sex, and money among the ultra-Orthodox in Israel: An integrated sociocultural and evolutionary perspective

The origin of the tendency for men to value wealth more than women can be explained by both social role theory and evolutionary theory. We integrate these two perspectives to provide insight into a unique cultural context, the Jewish ultra-Orthodox community in Israel, where social roles are reversed, such that women are the primary breadwinners in the family. Studies 1a and 1b provide support for social role theory's claim that men and women will internalize attitudes toward wealth that are consistent with their gender role in society. These findings are then integrated with an evolutionary perspective suggesting that men strive to elevate their personal status as a means of attracting mates. In most modern societies this equates to the accumulation of wealth, but in the ultra-Orthodox community it is religious devotion and piety that determine the status of men. An examination of mating preferences in the ultra-Orthodox community confirms many predictions from an evolutionary perspective and departs only in that women do not show a preference for mates with good financial prospects, but rather, owing to the unique sociocultural definition of status, women display a preference for men of strong religious devotion (Study 2). This contrasts with the secular Jewish community where women show the typical preference for wealthy men (Study 3). These findings are consistent with the idea that men may have evolved preferences for achieving status given the mating advantages it confers with women, but how status is achieved may be culturally specific.     

Walking attenuates the relationships of high-meat, low-fruit dietary intake to total and regional adiposity in men and women

Vigorous physical activity (running) has been shown to attenuate the association between diet and body weight. Walking is the most popular physical activity, but is a moderate-intensity physical activity because it requires less than sixfold the energy expenditure of sitting at rest. We therefore examined whether reported distance walked per week affected the relationship of diet to BMI and circumferences of the waist, hip, and chest in 30,014 female and 7,133 male participants of the National Walkers' Health Study. Reported meat and fruit intakes served as indicators of high-risk diets for weight gain. The analyses showed that higher meat and lower fruit intake were significantly and consistently associated with greater BMI and waist circumference at all activity levels. Longer usual walking distance significantly attenuated the concordant relationships of diet with women's BMIs (P < 10(-8)), men's BMIs (P = 0.04), and women's waist (P < 10(-6)), hip (P = 0.0001), and chest circumferences (P < 10(-5)). Compared to walkers who averaged <1.5 km/day, the association of diet with adiposity in subjects who walked ≥1.5 km/day was reduced 21% in women and 31% in men for BMI; 20% in women and 27% in men for waist circumference; 19% for women's hip circumference; and 26% for women's chest circumference. Thus we conclude that diets characterized by high-meat/low-fruit intake were significantly associated with greater BMI, and this association was attenuated by moderate physical activity. The weaker results in men than women probably related to the smaller sample size, and reduced statistical power of the men.     

Rains gone bad, women gone mad: rethinking gender rituals of rebellion and patriarchy

This article reconsiders the argument that 'rituals of rebellion' be seen as women's ritual response to everyday patriarchal structures – an argument originally suggested by Gluckman, but recently evoked by Spencer, the Creiders, and others – in light of recent anthropological theorizing on gender. Using as an example one such women's ritual among the Ihanzu of Tanzania, I show how this particular formulation reduces complex notions of gender and gender practices to unnuanced, monolithic, and all-encompassing gender-systems, both in everyday and ritual realms. This it does, first, by conflating gender ideals with gender behaviours and, second, by ignoring people's conflicting ideas about gender. By problematizing these contradictions, I demonstrate how Ihanzu women's rites are not about rebellion but gender complementarity, played out by women dancers embodying both genders simultaneously. Above all, this case compels us to rethink, fundamentally, 'rituals of rebellion' and 'patriarchy'.     

Female sexuality,social reproduction,and the politics of medical intervention in Niger: Kel Ewey Tuareg perspectives

This essay explores connections between political institutions, forms of power, and women's health care concerns from a cultural anthropological perspective. I focus on the roles of different medical establishments among the Kel Ewey Tuareg of Niger—Western-European sponsored, central state, traditional herbalism and Islamic scholarship—in creating, maintaining, and disputing these constructs, through the invention and elaboration of disease categories and through the selective application of medical and reproductive models and technology to women. I also explore women's attempts to manage these forces, as they draw upon a cultural inventory that is alternately supportive and in conflict with their interests.     

Variables that explain variation in prenatal care in Turkey; social class, education and ethnicity re-visited

The extent and quality of prenatal care are important for the health of women and their babies. Recent studies suggest that women lack adequate prenatal care in contemporary Turkey. This paper uses regression models to examine the major factors impacting on the access of women to prenatal care through the 1993 Turkish Demographic and Health Survey. The findings suggest that after controlling for class, ethnicity does not explain the likelihood of a woman's access to prenatal care, partly because the predominant patriarchal ideology in Turkey determines women's access to education, which in turn determines their access to prenatal care. It can be argued that unless women's socioeconomic status in the family improves, their access to health care in general and prenatal care in particular will not increase significantly.     

The Fundamentals of Fertility: Cosmology and Conversion in a Southwestern Nigerian Town

This article examines the place of religion in the process of 'becoming modern', associated with conversion to Christianity and with literacy, in one Ekiti Yoruba town in southwestern Nigeria. It questions theories of modernization that presume a shift from communal 'traditional' to private, secularized religious practice, focusing on beliefs about the genesis of life, specifically cosmology and fertility. This approach provides a means for examining assumptions about the separation of the secular and religious, evidenced through an examination of local interpretations of biblical texts associated with barrenness and extraordinary births. How these stories have been interpreted by Ekiti Yoruba women and men offers a perspective on the processes whereby forms of 'modern hybrids' are constructed, altered, and reconstructed, as well as on how the fundamental bases of fertility are understood in particular social contexts.     

A biosocial model of medication use among older women and men in Ismailia, Egypt

In Western industrialized countries, women report using health services, and certain medications, more often than do men. Often, analyses are based on data that exclude objective measures of morbidity and that come from cross-sectional surveys, which precludes the use of socioeconomic covariates that are endogenous to seeking care. Here, differences in objective cognitive and physical function, as well as differences in reporting on illness, propensity to seek care, and socioeconomic resources are expected to account for differences in care-seeking behaviour among women and men. This model is applied to the question of medication use in Ismailia, Egypt, using two waves of survey data and in-home tests of physical function from 896 adults aged 50 years and older. The results show that women use "modern" medications more often than do men, and that differences between women and men in reported morbidity and disability, observed cognitive and physical function, and economic resources account for women's greater use of medication. The findings underline a need for biosocial models to understand differences in women's and men's care-seeking behaviour in later life.     

Psychological health and religious coping of Ghanaian women with infertility

Background

Infertility has been shown to have considerable psychological effects on the well-being of couples, especially women. Religion has been found as a resource used by infertile women to cope with their distress. Little research has examined the influence of religious coping on psychological distress among infertile women in Ghana. This study examines the relationship between positive and negative religious coping and psychological health for women with infertility problems in Ghana.

Methods

One hundred and fifty married women who were receiving assisted reproduction care in two specialized clinics were recruited for this study. Participants were administered with the Brief Symptom Inventory and Brief Religious Coping Scale to assess psychological health associated with infertility and religious coping respectively. A hierarchical regression was performed to examine the relative contribution of the domains of psychological health (i.e. somatization, anxiety and depression) in predicting negative religious coping and positive religious.

Results

The results showed that negative religious coping was significant and positively correlated with somatization, depression and anxiety. Furthermore, a positive relationship also existed between positive religious coping and somatization and anxiety but not depression. After controlling for age and duration of infertility, somatization and anxiety predicted positive religious coping whilst all the domains of psychological health (somatization, anxiety and depression) precited negative religious coping.

Conclusions

This study expanded on the existing literature by examining positive and negative religious coping with psychological distress associated with infertility for women. These results underscore the need for health professionals providing therapies for women with infertility to acknowledge and consider their religious beliefs as this influences their mental health.