Women’s autonomy and its impact on environmental sustainability agenda

The role of women in economic development and the global environment is vital for progressing them towards the United Nations sustainable development goal (SDG-5) that emphasized the need to empower women in every walk of life. The study examines women’s autonomy in the sustainable development agenda under China’s open innovation system from 1975 to 2019. The study employed an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model, vector autoregressive (VAR) Granger causality, and innovation accounting matrix to estimate parameters. The existing data are summarized and collated in the context of China to explain as a correlational study. The results show that women’s autonomy moderated with technology spills over to decrease greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and substantiate the hump-shaped relationship between them. The increased spending on research and development (R&D) activities, patent publications, and renewable energy consumption empowers women to be equipped with the latest sustainable technologies to improve environmental quality. The pollution haven hypothesis verifies a given country, where trade liberalization policies tend to increase polluting industries to set up their plants that engaged in dirty production that exacerbate GHG emissions. The causality estimates confirmed that technological innovations and renewable energy consumption leads to women’s autonomy. In contrast, females’ share in the labor force participation rate leads to an increase in renewable energy consumption. Thus, it is evident that there is a positive role of women in the country’s sustainable development.

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Ecofeminism and Natural Resource Management: Justice Delayed, Justice Denied

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13137319 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (13) ◽

pp. 7319

Author(s):

Yang Liu ◽

Muhammad Khalid Anser ◽

Khalid Zaman

Keyword(s):

Mineral Resource ◽

Natural Resource ◽

Access To Finance ◽

Positive Role ◽

Women’S Autonomy ◽

Ecological Footprints ◽

Women's Autonomy ◽

Resource Rents

Women have a right to excel in all spheres of activity. However, their roles are mainly confined in the resource extraction industry due to masculinity bias. African women are considered exemplary cases where women have low access to finance and economic opportunities to progress in the natural resource industry. This study examines the role of women’s autonomy in mineral resource extraction by controlling ecological footprints, financial development, environmental degradation, economic growth, and changes in the general price level in the Democratic Republic of the Congo data from 1975–2019. The autoregressive distributed lag estimates show that in the short-run, women’s autonomy decreases mineral resource rents; however, this result disappears in the long-run and the positive role of women’s autonomy in increasing resource capital is confirmed. Ecological footprints are in jeopardy from saving mineral resources both in the short- and long-term. Financial development negatively impacts mineral resource rents, while women’s access to finance supports the mineral resource agenda. The positive role of women in environmental protection has led to increased mineral resource rents in the short- and long-term. Women’s social and economic autonomy increases mineral resource rents in the short-term, while it has evaporated in the long-term. The Granger causality has confirmed the unidirectional linkages running from women’s green ecological footprints, access to finance, and women participating in environmental protection to mineral resource rents in a country. The variance decomposition analysis has shown that women’s economic autonomy and access to finance will exert more significant variance shocks to mineral resource rents over the next ten years’ period. The results conclude the positive role of women’s freedom in the mineral resource sustainability agenda. Thus, there is a high need to authorize women through access to finance and economic decisions to restore natural resource capital nationwide.

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Women’s Autonomy and Skilled Attendance During Pregnancy and Delivery in Nepal

Maternal and Child Health Journal ◽

10.1007/s10995-016-1923-2 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 20 (6) ◽

pp. 1222-1229 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

Situ KC ◽

Subas Neupane

Keyword(s):

Women’S Autonomy ◽

Women's Autonomy ◽

Skilled Attendance ◽

Pregnancy And Delivery

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“Doing it Our Way” Participation and Kinship in Traditional Surrogacy Narratives in Aotearoa New Zealand

Medicine Anthropology Theory | An open-access journal in the anthropology of health illness and medicine ◽

10.17157/mat.8.3.5093 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 8 (3) ◽

pp. 1-26

Author(s):

Hannah Grace Gibson

Keyword(s):

New Zealand ◽

Ethnographic Research ◽

Women’S Autonomy ◽

Women's Autonomy ◽

Aotearoa New Zealand ◽

State Oversight ◽

Gestational Surrogacy ◽

Multiple Discourses

The practice of traditional surrogacy gives rise to multiple discourses around women’s autonomy and kinship practices globally. In the Aotearoa New Zealand context, traditional surrogacy (where the surrogate donates her own egg as well as gestating the foetus) is legal only on an altruistic basis. Furthermore, it is subject to neither medical nor state oversight, unlike gestational surrogacy which is heavily regulated. Drawing on three years of ethnographic research, this article focuses on both traditional surrogates in Aotearoa New Zealand who have children of their own and those who have chosen a childfree life. Their narratives reveal multilayered motivations that align with and diverge from the ‘help’ narrative often associated with altruistic surrogacy. By drawing on and contributing to current debates on surrogacy globally, I show that traditional surrogates take on their role with clear ideas about kinship and different interpretations of reproductive participation. Their narratives bring to the fore the under-researched topic of traditional surrogacy, and in particular of women who do not want children of their own but choose to donate their eggs and gestate the foetus for another woman. I argue that their negotiation of stigma to make/resist kin disrupts pervasive heteronormative modes of kinship.

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Household Organization, Women's Autonomy, and Contraceptive Behavior in Southern Ethiopia

Studies in Family Planning ◽

10.1111/j.1728-4465.1999.t01-2-.x ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 30 (4) ◽

pp. 302-314 ◽

Cited By ~ 72

Author(s):

Dennis P. Hogan ◽

Betemariam Berhanu ◽

Assefa Hailemariam

Keyword(s):

Southern Ethiopia ◽

Women’S Autonomy ◽

Contraceptive Behavior ◽

Women's Autonomy ◽

Household Organization

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Does gender inequality matter for access to and utilization of maternal healthcare services in Bangladesh?

PLoS ONE ◽

10.1371/journal.pone.0257388 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 16 (9) ◽

pp. e0257388

Author(s):

Firoz Ahmed ◽

Fahmida Akter Oni ◽

Sk. Sharafat Hossen

Keyword(s):

Gender Inequality ◽

Gender Gap ◽

Partner Violence ◽

Bargaining Power ◽

Healthcare Services ◽

Household Wealth ◽

Maternal Healthcare ◽

Intrahousehold Bargaining ◽

Women’S Autonomy ◽

Women's Autonomy

There is a high prevalence of gender gap in Bangladesh which might affect women’s likelihood to receive maternal healthcare services. In this backdrop, we aim to investigate how gender inequality measured by intrahousehold bargaining power (or autonomy) of women and their attitudes towards intimate partner violence (IPV) affects accessing and utilizing maternal health care services. We used Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS) data of 2014 covering 5460 women who gave birth at least one child in the last three years preceding the survey. We performed logistic regression to estimate the effect of women’s autonomy and their attitude towards IPV on access to and utilization of maternal healthcare services. Besides, we employed different channels to understand the heterogeneous effect of gender inequality on access to maternal healthcare services. We observed that women having autonomy positively influenced attaining five required antenatal care (ANC) services (AOR: 1.17; 95% CI: 0.98–1.41) and women’s negative attitudes towards IPV were positively associated with five ANC services (AOR: 1.42; 95% CI: 1.02–1.97), sufficient ANC visits (COR: 1.55; CI: 1.19–2.01), skilled birth attendant (SBA) (AOR: 1.43; 95% CI: 1.05–1.94) and postnatal care (PNC) services (AOR: 1.44; 95% CI: 1.12–1.84). Besides, rural residency, religion, household wealth, education of both women and husband were found to have some of the important channels which were making stronger effect of gender inequality on access to maternal healthcare services. The findings of our study indicate a significant association between access to maternal healthcare services and women’s autonomy as well as attitude towards IPV in Bangladesh. We, therefore, recommend to protect women from violence at home and mprove their intrahousehold bargaining power to increase their access to and utilization of required maternal healthcare services.

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