This research analyzes the intersection of community context, gender, and health in India. India has risen as a center of technological innovation and production and is poised as a large consumer market for globally produced goods and services. Yet, its role in the global economy partly depends on the development and health of all its citizens. The well-being of large sectors of India?s population has not risen in tandem with other sectors. India lags far behind most nations in terms of gender equality in health. There are also inequities in the health of women based on the geographic contexts in which they live. Relatively little is understood about how attributes of geographic contexts are linked to variations in women's health. Gender is not merely a personal characteristic but rather an arrangement of inequality with various dimensions.
This project examines how gendered cultural and economic practices in communities are associated with women?s health, holding constant other key individual, family, and community-level characteristics. It uses national data on women drawn from community contexts located within all Indian states and union territories, excluding Lakshadweep and Andaman and Nicobar Islands. It will examine health outcomes using multilevel and spatial modeling techniques in order to isolate the role of community context factors in women's health.
This research has varied broader impacts. For countries such as India, gaining a better understanding of processes through which community contexts influence women?s health is especially important because of the prevalence of and variation in gender norms across local communities. This research will also have policy implications for government and non-government initiatives to promote health equity. Insights stemming from this research will have the potential better equip leaders to face the practices and processes in communities that impact the lives of girls and women. More generally, this study promises to bring cultural and economic practices into sharper relief with regard to researchers' understanding of health and well-being.
A significant proportion of the world’s population lives in India. India is undergoing a transition from a nation with high levels of infectious diseases to a nation with a large burden of chronic diseases and debilitating conditions. Social inputs to health such as families and members of communities are important contributors to health in midlife and young adulthood in India. Family and community effects on health in the general adult population are the focus of this project, especially understanding the cultural dimensions of family and community influences centered on gender practices such as women’s seclusion, women’s decision-making, dowry giving, and male-first eating order in households. Health is measured as short-term morbidity, number of days ill with short-term morbidity, long-term morbidity, self-rated health, and hypertension. I analyze data on individuals and their community contexts from the India Human Development Survey, 2005. Results show that increases in the frequency of dowry giving in community contexts are associated with increases in three morbidity outcomes for women and also greater gender gaps in health. Two morbidity outcomes also increase for men in communities with a high frequency dowry practice. A fourth outcome, women’s self-rated, is linked to community dowry frequency and the frequency of male-first eating in households. An analysis focusing specifically on hypertension shows that gender differences in hypertension are exacerbated in households that seclude women and restrict women’s household decision making. These measures are associated with greater hypertension for women, but in the case of women’s seclusion, reduced hypertension for men. Findings from this research have been presented at the 2012 annual meetings of the American Sociological Association and the Society for the Study of Social Problems. I am in the process submitting articles from this research to scholarly journals. These findings will help policy makers identify the social contexts of vulnerable populations and address social inequalities in health.
