Based on ethnographic fieldwork, we explore the rural-urban migration of 27 girls and young women who leave their rural communities and move to the city to pursue their secondary education, in the ethnically diverse Southern Region of Ethiopia. We consider the nature and extent of the inequalities that they face in rural areas which limit their…

Using ethnographic data collected with Muslim women teachers from rural and low-income communities in Pakistan, this article shows how empowerment for these educated women meant access to different forms of power within families and communities. The focus on the issue of choice in marriage reveals how the participants conceptualised empowerment as…

In 2004, the government of Punjab, Pakistan introduced a conditional cash assistance program for girls attending secondary schools. We exploit variations in exposure to the program across cohorts and regions to estimate the long run effects of the program on women's marriage and fertility decisions, maternal healthcare utilization and the health…

This paper highlights experiences of young mothers, victims of child, early and forced marriages (CEFM) as pertaining to their basic rights, social wellbeing and sustainable livelihood four years after their participation in the Girls Inspire project. CEFM is still a critical issue in Tanzania and one of the obstacles toward girls' and women's…

Although the larger portion of the world population is women but hardly 25% women are employed. Furthermore, they have been given second class status. Considering the need and importance of job for women, a survey regarding the impact of job on the social status of women has been conducted. A sample of 100 employed and 100 unemployed women was…

This article explores the effects of activities in Men's Sheds on elderly women. Specifically, it investigates the opportunities that are made available for women when their husband/partner becomes active in the Men's Shed movement; focussing on 'empowerment', 'gender identity' and 'well-being'. Five focus group interviews and eight individual…

It is difficult for students who are just being introduced to major geographical concepts to understand how relatively free countries like India or Mali can have such high levels of human rights abuses as child brides, dowry deaths, and domestic violence. Textbooks explain it and video clips show examples, but it still seems surreal to teenagers…

Fidelity concerns the extent to which a specific evaluation sufficiently incorporates the core characteristics of the overall approach to justify labeling that evaluation by its designated name. Fidelity has traditionally meant implementing a model in exactly the same way each time following the prescribed steps and procedures. The essential…

The past two decades have witnessed a dramatic increase in cross-border marriage in Southeast and East Asia largely as a result of increased population mobility as people move for work, study, lifestyle or even marital reasons. Japan is no exception with a substantial increase in the number of cross-border or "international marriages"…

Against the backdrop of high human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevalence in stable relationships in Southern Africa, our study presents sociocultural barriers to safer sex practice in Zimbabwean marriages. We conducted 36 in-depth interviews and four focus group discussions with married men and women in Zimbabwe in 2008. Our aim was to identify…

As a postcolonial Indian woman now living in the West, I managed to overcome my own circumstances by finding my voice and resisting the oppression of an abusive arranged marriage. Subsequently, as a teacher of at risk marginalized and immigrant youth in the inner cities of 21st century America, who continue to be "colonized" by a public…

Approximately 10 million pregnant women around the world develop night blindness annually. In India, one in 11 pregnant women suffers from night blindness. This study used a nationally representative sample of 35,248 women from India between the ages of 15 and 49 who had given birth in the past five years to understand the effect of women's…

This study proposes an elaboration of the human development capability approach by theorizing empowerment capabilities as an essential aspect of the education of excluded village girls. Seeking to explain Chinese village girls' demand for schooling, the article identifies intangible and instrumental capabilities that have often been overlooked and…

The third of the eight Millennium Development Goals is to promote gender equality and empower women. This article discusses the factors that are associated with 31 female higher education students' choices and aspirations to pursue education and careers in mathematics and science-related fields. The analysis is based on semistructured interviews.…

While previous research has focused on the relationship between education and women's empowerment in the public sphere, their empowerment in the private sphere has been less fully developed in empirical studies. Drawing on a theoretical model of change in marital relationships, this article examines how women who participated in an innovative…