689.3
Maternal Health In Rural India: Consequences For Gender Inequality
Shakuntala.C.Shettar
Professor, Dept. of Sociology
Karnatak University,
Dharwad – 580 003
Abstract
Maternal health is a critical topic in global development. Maternal ill health and deaths impacts families, communities and societies and has far reaching effect across socio-economic strata. Despite recent data showing a positive turning point in the battle to keep mothers alive through pregnancy and child birth, the maternal mortality rate are still high in India and significant gender-based health disparities remain in India. With limited access to education and employment, high illiterates and increasing poverty level in India making health improvements for women exceedingly difficult. Female disability is especially in attributable to maternal causes and maternal deaths. The present paper is an effort in understanding maternal health and care in rural parts of Karnataka.
The objectives of the paper are to know the status of maternal health and consequent problems and also to analyze the socio-economic factors that act as barriers to access good health facilities. The data for this paper are based on the complete birth histories collected from the 200 ever married women age 20-49 years, selected from 4 villages of Dharwad district in Karnataka.
The findings suggest that inspite of the Government’s efforts in improving maternal health in rural India, women have been suffering from health problems resulted from complications during pregnancy and child birth and also anemia and malnutrition. Hence the existing health facilities need to be strengthened to improve such health problems of pregnant women.
Key Words: Maternal Mortality, Maternal Health, Autonomy, ANM, Sex and Gender, Gender Inequality.