Narrow Results

Water scarcity and non-existent or poor sanitation have special implications for the poor in a rural context of a developing country such as India, especially in the case of women due to their personal hygiene needs. The penetration of sanitary napkins is very low in Indian villages for reasons such as the high cost of branded napkins, availability, and cultural barriers. Over 88% of rural women use unhygienic alternatives during menstruation, with 77% using a piece of old cloth and many others nothing at all. These practices lead to a deterioration in health of the mother as well as the child and, sometimes, the death of the mother. Furthermore, a large proportion of girls in India do not go to school during their menstruation period, for an average of 4–5 days every month, and at least 23% of girls drop out of school when they start menstruating. Adult women cut down on their productive day-to-day activities. Menstruating lower-income women also have to follow certain social exclusion norms and treat it as a purely private matter as it is considered a social taboo. The access to personal reproductive hygiene products and services thus becomes indispensable in terms of addressing hygiene and sanitation needs. Furthermore, this is more of a developmental/social venture rather than just pure rural marketing. This paper examines the issue from a social enterprise and social innovation perspective in order to understand the issues involved in changing the situation. It examines the case of a social venture in India (Goonj) which has attempted to deal with this market in terms of its approach, product design, market creation, performance, issues faced, and impact made. The paper attempts to infer lessons for making social entrepreneurship and social innovations work in developing country health and hygiene contexts in the form of a Bottom of Pyramid (BoP) market solution.

According to the 2011 Census of India, around 55% of rural households do not access a private bathing facility. The research study examines whether a bathing space’s presence improves the quality of life of the women using it. The study was conducted in two Indian states, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal, where two private agencies had facilitated bathing spaces. 54 women were interviewed for the purpose of the study. Individual interviews were conducted to understand the perception of the women who had recent access to the bathing spaces. The research shows that women who have access to bathing space have perceived positive changes in their health. Because of access to a private and secluded area, they can carry out Menstrual Hygiene Management practices. Along with the health benefits, the women participants also perceived changes in their daily lives. While there were numerous benefits of the bathing space, the burden of filling water and maintaining the bathing spaces on women increased. The paper also tries to understand what are the reasons for not constructing a bathing space. Cultural norms, lack of land, lack of water and water connectivity, lack of awareness, and economic reasons came across as reasons for not constructing a bathing space in the study.

The labor force participation rate of women in India has decreased despite economic growth, which has limited the advancement of their rights unlike in most other countries. This paper examines the determinants of labor force participation by gender in rural and urban areas using a probit model with data from the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) for 2011–2012 to analyze the factors that restrict workforce participation. The estimation results are presented below. First, the marital status of males, both rural and urban, has a significant impact on their participation in the workforce due to family support. In contrast, females face multiple restrictions based on marital, caste and religion, demonstrating that sociocultural factors have limited their participation regardless of regional factors. Second, in rural areas, the educational years of female workers negatively affect labor participation, but the constraints of marriage are weaker than in urban areas. Women in lower castes participate more in the rural labor force, which is interpreted as a result of their livelihood in the industrial structure consisting of agriculture. On the other hand, the caste system negatively affects female participation in urban areas. Finally, these results indicate that the low-labor participation of females is the result of a complicated process influenced by various factors, including regional effects and patriarchal cultural values in India. Therefore, it is necessary to provide employment opportunities and encourage economic incentives for more women to enter the labor market spontaneously, considering regional effects in policies, in order for women to emerge as one group of social leaders.

Using the 2012 Bhutan Living Standard Survey, this paper finds that rural nonfarm activities comprise 60.7% of rural household income in Bhutan and this contribution increases with higher income and education levels. The poor and less educated participate less in the nonfarm sector. When they do, they are self-employed in petty nonfarm activities, which require little investment and little or no skills. Accounting for endogeneity and sample selection issues, we estimate the determinants of participation in nonfarm activities and nonfarm incomes. We find that a household's education and labor supply play an important role in accessing more remunerative nonfarm employment. Interestingly, we find that women play an important role in self-employment in nonfarm activities. Decomposition shows that nonfarm income has a disequalizing effect and farm income has an equalizing effect, indicating the need to increase the endowment of poor households to enable them to access the lucrative rural nonfarm sector. Further decomposition reveals that self-employment in petty nonfarm activities reduces inequality.

This chapter will firstly review the current legal framework of securing equal land rights between women and men in China. Secondly, based on the sample survey undertaken in Shanxi Province in 1996,³ this chapter will examine the current state of land distribution, identify the causes of gender inequality in terms of security of land rights, and determine the impact of “insecure” land rights on the socioeconomic status of women. Finally, the policy implications will be examined. This chapter proves that the legislative framework and economic institutions in general protect gender equality in land distribution. However, loopholes in the detailed institutional arrangements lead to the insecurity of women's land rights, especially for divorced women, women re-location due to marriage, and for their children who miss out on land redistribution as undertaken in their village communities. Although these phenomena have not yet significantly affected the intra-household bargaining power of the agricultural women, they do tend to reduce the households of the landless women to poverty. It is therefore necessary to add a gender perspective to the current Land Administrative Law and to relevant government regulations regarding farmland tenure.