Joanne Leslie

Women, work, and child welfare in the Third World

The studies in this volume address the questions of how women manage their work and child care responsibilities in developing countries and whether specific types or patterns of womens work have negative impacts on child welfare. The multifaceted nature of womens work and child welfare and the benefits of using a variety of research approaches and methodologies are evident in this collection. Chapters 2 and 3 demonstrate that when carefully analyzed and considered as a whole a great deal can be learned from research and project evaluations that may not have been specifically designed to focus on the relationship between womens work and child welfare. These 2 overview chapters are included because they present interesting preliminary findings concerning the relationship between womens work and 2 key aspects of child welfare--child nutrition and child care--and provide a framework and point of departure for reading the country-specific studies in chapters 4-11. At each studys core is the question of whether womens work particularly recent increases or changes in womens labor force participation may have a detrimental effect on the welfare of children in the Third World. The findings vary considerably depending on the specific characteristics of womens work in the study population the particular measures of child welfare used and the theoretical and methodological approach taken. It is clearly important to disaggregate both the concepts of womens work and child welfare. Key characteristics of womens work--such as type of work location of work time spent working income earned and work-related benefits--as well as key aspects of child welfare--such as morbidity nutritional status cognitive development dietary intake and caregiver--need to be defined and measured separately.

Meeting the changing health needs of women in developing countries

Demographic, epidemiological and socio-economic trends in developing countries are creating new mortality and morbidity patterns for both women and men. Womens health needs will increasingly include problems beyond reproduction, and health interventions must take into consideration the important characteristics of womens lives that affect their ability to address these problems. Meeting the changing health needs of women in developing countries will require more comprehensive health interventions guided by innovative, interdisciplinary research. A broader conceptualization of womens health needs, and the constraints and opportunities associated with meeting those needs, is necessary to avoid overly simplistic assigning of responsibility, which can lead to blaming organizations, disciplines and individuals, including women themselves, for persistent health problems and underutilization of existing services.

Recruiting African-American Women to Community-based Health Promotion Research

The Eating and Exercising for a Cancer-free Life (EECL) pilot study was conducted in 1994 to provide data for a planned, community-based, culturally tailored, randomized intervention trial that was subsequently funded to start in late 1996. Because high attrition rates have generally precluded long-term data collection in the few reported illness prevention studies of African-American women, l a middle class segment of the population has been targeted for the full-scale intervention. Targeting the middle class not only increases the likelihood of longterm study adherence, ~ but also increases comparability of findings in this study with those reported on predominantly middle class white populations. This paper describes the recruitment process and characteristics of the sample recruited for the pilot study. The relationship between recruitment strategy and subsample characteristics is discussed. The EECL pilot study was designed, in part, to: (1) pretest participant recruitment strategies; and (2) identify psychosocial correlates of obesity and leanness among women recruited.

Malnutrition and Dietary Protein: Evidence from China and from International Comparisons

Malnutrition, as measured by anthropometric status, is a powerful risk factor for illness and elevated death rates throughout life. Understanding the relative importance of disease, dietary quantity, and dietary quality in causing malnutrition is therefore of major importance in the design of public policy. This paper contributes to the understanding of the relative importance of quantity and quality of diet by utilizing aggregate data to complement previously reported individual-level studies. Three compilations of anthropometric data—one involving subjects from 13 provinces in China, another involving subjects from 64 counties in China, and a third involving 41 populations in 40 countries—are used to examine the relative importance for human growth of inadequacies of dietary energy and protein. The analysis involves regressing average adult heights and weights against estimates of average energy and protein availability (by province, county, or country) and per capita incomes. We use protein availability in part as a marker for overall quality of the diet, while recognizing that protein is far from perfectly correlated with dietary fat or micronutrient availability. The paper discusses issues of both data quality and statistical methodology, and points to relevant resulting caveats to our conclusions. Subject to these limitations, all three analyses suggest that, at the levels of dietary intake in these populations, lower protein intake is related to growth failure whereas lower levels of energy availability are not. The protein effect appears stronger for males than for females.

The relationship between maternal work patterns and infant feeding practices in Jamaican female headed households

Findings from a one‐year longitudinal study of 109 Jamaican women and their infants are reported. The study was designed to examine the relationship between maternal work patterns and infant feeding practices during the infants’ first year. All women had at least one other preschool child, and identified themselves as having primary responsibility for economic maintenance of their household. The majority of women worked outside the home for income during at least part of the study period. However, infant feeding practices were found to be remarkably similar between employed and non‐employed mothers. Mixed feeding was initiated early, but over half of all infants were still being breastfed at the end of the year, and longer duration of breastfeeding was protective against growth faltering. The main risk factors for growth faltering were lack of steady employment, a large number of dependent children and a lack of other sources of maternal support.