Record Item Year: 2005

Summary: If development means the expansion of human capabilities, then freedom from domestic violence should be an integral part of any exercise for evaluating developmental progress. This paper focuses on a hitherto unexplored factor underlying women’s risk of marital violence, namely, women’s property status. Many studies have examined the scale and correlates of marital violence, but neglected this dimension. Based on a household survey in Kerala (India), the authors assess the prevalence and correlates of both physical and psychological violence—long term and current. Women owning immovable property (land or a house) are found to face a significantly lower risk of […]

Based on empirical research, this article examines the status, situations and development issues of rural women displaced by the monumental Three Gorges Project (TGP) in China. The study reveals that TGP resettlement is leaving women worse off as family members, as well as worse off than male members. Woman resettlers are more likely to become impoverished than men, partly because women make up the main labour force in agricultural sectors. Most women are unable to achieve occupational mobility in the process of resettlement. Fewer employment opportunities, a gender-segregated labour market, low level of human capital and social prejudice are principal […]

“This paper seeks to examine the issue of land rights, and its links with household food security as well as gender equality and questions some of the assumptions being made therein. After a brief analysis of shifts in policy discourse and practice, both nationally and internationally, in terms of agricultural production and land management as vital for food security, it seeks to analyse the implications of some of these measures on gender relations. Does the increasing attention to women reflect growing gender equality, or does it lead to an enhancement of the work burden and responsibilities, without much change in […]