Health, Reproductive Rights & Sexuality

Full equality for women and girls can be attained only when they have the information and services they need to lead healthy lives and make informed and independent decisions about their health, reproductive health and sexuality. Health for women depends on many factors, including access to safe water and nutritious food; affordable care and insurance; disease prevention and access to comprehensive reproductive and maternal health services; and awareness and support for women with HIV/AIDS and other diseases and disabilities. Health is not limited to physical well-being but extends to sexuality, mental health and body image as well. Explore the resources listed below, including Related Categories links, or use the Keyword Search for more information.

The Economic Security and Well-being Index for Women in New York City™

New York City is home to more than four million women and girls representing a wide range of racial and ethnic backgrounds, citizenship statuses, educational attainment levels, and occupations. Of those, close to one in four are economically vulnerable, meaning they are likely to live in poverty, have lower earnings and suffer longer spells of unemployment than other women in the City.

Teaser:

The Economic Security and Well-being Index for Women in New York City™ provides an in-depth analysis of the economic security, health and safety, and well-being of women in the 59 community districts. It analyzes issues that shape the lives of women and girls, including poverty, income and employment; violence and safety; and education and health.

Economic Security and Well-Being Index for Women in New York City

Submitted by communications on Tue, 04/09/2013 - 12:46pm

URL:

http://www.nywf.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/New-York-Womens-Foundation-Report.pdf

Member Organization:

New York Women's Foundation

Global AIDS Conference Comes to U.S.

Teaser:

The International AIDS Conference comes to Washington, D.C., the American city with a higher AIDS infection rate than many African countries.

Editorial:

From ABC News:

As 25,000 global experts descend on Washington, D.C., this week for the first International AIDS Conference in the United States in 22 years, they face some sobering statistics: 3 percent of all residents in the nation's capital are infected with the HIV virus.

And with 7 percent of all black males HIV-positive, the city has a higher infection rate than African countries like Ethiopia, Nigeria and Rwanda.

The world might be winning the war on AIDS -- 2.7 million had HIV in 2010, down from 3.2 million a decade earlier -- according to UNAIDS, but the United States, alongside Eastern Europe, still sees new infections.

Nearly 1.2 million Americans are now living with HIV/AIDS, an all-time high, with nearly 50,000 new infections every year, according to theCenters for Disease Control and Prevention.

[...]

Source:

ABC News

URL:

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/hivaids-infection-rates-rise-us-rare-conference-opens/story?id=16831699#.UBKeHWFfHll

Date:

July 27, 2012

Affiliate:

Associated Issues & Expertise:

Project shows benefits of applying sex and gender analysis in research

Teaser:

Gendered Innovations in Science, Health & Medicine and Engineering at Stanford University has developed 11 methods for integrating sex and gender analysis into research projects, and 14 case studies demonstrating the benefits of using them.

Editorial:

From Stanford University News:

Since Schiebinger launched the Gendered Innovations project in the summer of 2009, the project has produced 14 case studies to demonstrate how applying sex and gender analysis to research studies has helped create new knowledge and technologies.

The project was initiated with start-up funding from Stanford's Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research. Schiebinger, a former director of the Clayman Institute, is the editor of the 2008 book, Gendered Innovations in Science and Engineering.

All the project's peer-reviewed case studies can be found on its website, including:

Stem Cells: Analyzing Sex
Animal Research: Designing Health and Biomedical Research
De-Gendering the Knee: Overemphasizing Sex Differences as a Problem
Heart Disease in Women: Formulating Research Questions
Pregnant Crash Test Dummies: Rethinking Standards and Reference Models
Water: Participatory Research and Design

"The website is a resource for researchers," Schiebinger said. "It's globally accessible and freely available to anyone with an Internet connection.

An international cast of contributors

The Gendered Innovations project was developed through six international workshops. In 2011, the European Union joined the project, followed by the U.S. National Science Foundation in 2012.

"The project was created through a unique international collaboration of scientists, engineers and gender experts," Schiebinger said.

[...]

Source:

Stanford University News

URL:

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/july/gender-analysis-science-072612.html

Date:

July 27, 2012

Affiliate:

Associated Issues & Expertise:

Study: Proof That We Sexually Objectify Women

Teaser:

The Atlantic summarizes "Seeing women as objects: The sexual body part recognition bias," a study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology .

Editorial:

From The Atlantic:

PROBLEM: Few would argue that the objectification of women is a real thing -- and a real problem -- but as yet there's been no cognitive explanation for it in a literal sense. Do we really look at women differently than we do men, and are they actually objectified in the eye -- and brain -- of the beholder?

METHODOLOGY: Images of average, fully clothed individuals (read: no supermodels in bikinis) were quickly flashed before the eyes of participants. After each one, the participants would then be shown two side-by-side images that zoomed in on one, "sexual" aspect of the individual (for example, a woman's midriff) and asked to identify the version that hadn't been modified. The experiment was also reversed, so that participants first looked at a specific part and then had to identify it in the context of an entire body. The test was designed to clue researchers in on whether the participants were using global or local cognitive processing while looking at the images -- in other words, whether they perceived the individuals as a whole or as an assemblage of their various parts.

[...]

Source:

The Atlantic

URL:

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/07/study-proof-that-we-sexually-objectify-women/260339/

Date:

July 26, 2012

Affiliate:

Associated Issues & Expertise:

Intended and Unintended Births in the United States: 1982–2010

Submitted by asklar on Tue, 07/24/2012 - 10:11am

Report from the National Center for Health Statistics.

Objectives—This report shows trends since 1982 in whether a woman wanted to get pregnant just before the pregnancy occurred. This is the most direct measure available of the extent to which women are able (or unable) to choose to have the number of births they want, when they want them. In this report, this is called the ‘‘standard measure of unintended pregnancy.’’

Methods—The data used in this report are primarily from the 2006–2010 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. The 2006–2010 NSFG included in-person interviews with 12,279 women aged 15–44. Some data in the trend analyses are taken from NSFG surveys conducted in
1982, 1988, 1995, and 2002.

URL:

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr055.pdf

2012 Mid-Year Legislative Wrap-Up

Submitted by asklar on Thu, 07/19/2012 - 10:32am

There's no question that 2011 was a truly seismic year for reproductive rights in the U.S. More than 60 laws damaging women's access to reproductive health care passed in 24 states, an unprecedented assault on women's health care. And this year, the powerful aftershock has further strained women's reproductive autonomy. As of July, 15 states had already passed around 40 harmful laws—marking another year of unbridled animosity toward women.

URL:

http://reproductiverights.org/sites/crr.civicactions.net/files/documents/USLP_midyear_7.18.12_v3.pdf

The State of Women of Color in the United States

Submitted by asklar on Wed, 07/18/2012 - 10:05am

Issue brief from the Center for American Progress:

This issue brief examines the state of women of color in the United States at large in regards to four key areas: the workplace wage gap, health, educational attainment, and political leadership. While conversations in the mainstream media would suggest that women of color are a monolithic entity, it is important to note that women of color are a diverse group with a variety of experiences. We offer specific data points on various racial and ethnic groups where available as we present the issues of greatest importance to women of color today, but remember that data are not always available for direct comparisons of different groups of women of color compared to their white counterparts.

URL:

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2012/07/women_of_color_brief.html

Women who work long hours 'more likely to put on weight'

Teaser:

Middle-aged women who work more than 40 hours per week are more likely to have less healthy lifestyles and gain more weight than women who work less.

Editorial:

From The Telegraph:

The study of more than 9000 women found those who worked more than 49 hours a week gained an average of about 1.9 per cent of their weight over a two-year period – or about 1.3 kilograms for a 69-kilogram woman. Those who worked part-time had an average weight gain of 1.5 per cent – or about 1 kilogram.

"These findings suggest that not working may have some protective effect against weight gain and may help promote weight loss," says the study, published in the International Journal of Obesity.

"This may be related to those women having more time to spend on maintaining a healthy body weight."
The study, which examined women aged 45 to 50, found those who worked long hours, defined as 41 to 48 hours a week, or very long hours, more than 49 hours a week, were also far more likely to smoke, drink at unhealthy levels, sleep less and not exercise.

About 65 per cent of those who worked long hours drank at risky levels, compared with 42 per cent of those who were not in the workforce and 53 per cent who were unemployed.

The study said employed women may be more likely to gain weight because they have less time for exercise, sleeping and preparing home-cooked meals.

The lead author, Nicole Au, from Melbourne's Monash University, said the impact of long work hours was particularly evident among the women who gained the most weight.

[...]

Source:

The Telegraph

URL:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9388846/Women-who-work-long-hours-more-likely-to-put-on-weight.html

Date:

July 13, 2012

Affiliate:

Associated Issues & Expertise:

Oceans Apart: The Higher Health Costs of Women in the U.S. Compared to Other Nations, and How Reform Is Helping

Submitted by asklar on Fri, 07/13/2012 - 10:42am

An estimated 18.7 million U.S. women ages 19 to 64 were uninsured in 2010, up from 12.8 million in 2000. An additional 16.7 million women had health insurance but had such high out-of-pocket costs relative to their income that they were effectively underinsured in 2010. This issue brief examines the implications of poor coverage for women in the United States by comparing their experiences to those of women in 10 other industrialized nations, all of which have universal health insurance systems. The analysis finds that women in the United States—both with and without health insurance— are more likely to go without needed health care because of cost and have greater difficulty paying their medical bills than women in the 10 other countries. In 2014, the Affordable Care Act will substantially reduce health care cost exposure for all U.S. women by significantly expanding and improving health insurance coverage.

URL:

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Publications/Issue-Briefs/2012/Jul/Oceans-Apart-Women.aspx

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NCRW is a network of leading university and community based research, policy, and advocacy centers with a growing global reach dedicated to advancing rights and opportunities for women and girls. We also have a Corporate Circle comprised of senior diversity professionals from leading U.S. and global member companies and a Presidents Circle of college and university leaders who share our commitment. NCRW harnesses the collective power of its network to provide knowledge, analysis, and thought leadership on issues ranging from reducing women’s poverty to building a critical mass of women’s leadership across sectors.

Health, Reproductive Rights & Sexuality

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