SUMMARY Women’s empowerment is a dynamic process that has been quantified, measured and described in a variety of ways. We measure empowerment in a sample of 3500 rural women in 128 villages of Bangladesh with five indicators. A conceptual framework is presented, together with descriptive data on the indicators. Linear regressions to examine effects of covariates show that a woman’s exposure to television is a significant predictor of three of the five indicators. A woman’s years of schooling is significantly associated with one of two self-esteem indicators and with freedom of mobility. Household wealth has a significant and positive association with a woman’s resource control but a significant negative association with her total decision-making score.

Economic liberalization in Bangladesh has led to the emergence of a number of export-oriented industries, of which the manufacture of ready-made garments is the most prominent. The industry currently employs around 1.5 million workers, the overwhelming majority of whom are women. This paper explores the poverty implications of this new form of employment through a comparison of the socio-economic backgrounds, wages and working conditions and contributions to household needs of women working for global markets with those working for domestic markets. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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This article re-assesses the effect of microcredit programme participation on women's empowerment by applying an analytical framework that recognizes the conceptual shift in emphasis in the definition of empowerment, from notions of greater well-being of women to notions of women's choice and active agency in the attainment of greater well-being. The author finds that microcredit programme participation has only a limited direct effect in increasing women's access to choice-enhancing resources, but has a much stronger effect in increasing women's ability to exercise agency in intrahousehold processes. Consequently, programme participation is able to increase women's welfare and possibly to reduce male bias in welfare outcomes, particularly in poor households.

"Vaccine hesitancy" is a concept used frequently in vaccination discourse. This concept challenges previously held perspective that individual vaccination attitudes and behaviours are a simple dichotomy of accept or reject. Given the importance of achieving high vaccine coverage in Canada to avoid vaccine preventable diseases and their consequences, vaccine hesitancy is an important issue that needs to be addressed. This article describes the scope and causes of vaccine hesitancy in Canada and proposes potential approaches to address it.

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A B STR A C T South Asia is a region characterized by a culture o f son preference, severe discrim ination against daughters, and excess levels of female mortality, leading to what Amartya Sen called the phen o m en o n o f "missing w om en." However, the onset of fertility decline across the region has been accom panied by considerable divergence in this phenom enon. In India, im provem ents in overall life expectancy have closed the gender gap in mortality rates am ong adults, b u t persisting gender discrim ination am ong children and increasing resort to female-selective abortion has led to growing im balance in child sex ratios and sex ratios at birth. In Bangladesh, by contrast, fertility decline has been accom panied by a closing o f the gender gap in mortality in all age groups. Using quantitative and qualitative data, this study explores changing attitudes toward sons and daughters in Bangladesh to explain why the phen o m en o n o f "missing w om en" has played out so differently in these two neighboring countries. KEYW ORDSIntrahousehold inequality, women and developm ent, fertility, g ender inequality, household behavior JEL Codes: J13, Z13, D1Variations in patriarchal structures across the world have given rise to m arked regional patterns in both form and severity of gender inequalities. Regional variations in sex ratios, typically defined as the ratio of m en to women in the population, are one m anifestation o f this. Sex ratios at birth (SRBs) generally converge to a norm o f around 105 boys to evety 100 girls (Christophe Z. Guilm oto 2012). However, the greater biological vulnerability o f male infants means that, with equal care and feeding, m ore girls tend to survive than boys, leading to a lowering of the ratio in overall populations in m uch o f the world. Thus, there are 100 m en to every ©2013 IAFFE

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