The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented health situation with considerable effects on health systems, economies and societies. Alongside clinically different outcomes for men and women, COVID-19 brought with it social and behavioral changes. There is a need to look at the current pandemic through a gender lens. This review delineates the disproportionate impact of the pandemic with respect to gender and explores the initial literature on gender and COVID-19. Further research can also consider studying the intersectionality within genders to facilitate engendering the public health programs and policies related to pandemics.
Background: In this questionnaire based cross sectional survey, the researchers aimed to identify the sociodemographic predictors of knowledge regarding puberty and menstruation among females of reproductive age visiting a public healthcare institute. Methods: Using non-probability sampling, a self-designed, pretested and validated interviewer administered questionnaire in Urdu language was used to collect data from females of reproductive age (18-55 years) visiting the Gynecology outpatient department of tertiary care hospital in Rawalpindi, Pakistan from November 2019 to March 2020. Results: Descriptive and inferential analysis using SPSS v. 21.0 revealed that 288 female participants with mean age 30.30±8.98 years participated in the study, out of which 48.6% of the participants had adequate knowledge regarding puberty and menstruation. The knowledge score was significantly higher among married females (67.7%), those living in urban areas (68.3%), having nuclear families (63.2%), and females with more than 12 years of education (69.9%), employed females (92.2%) and those with higher family income (83.3%). Binary logistic regression showed women living in urban setting were 4.01 times more likely to have good knowledge about puberty (OR 4.01, 95% CI 2.03-8.10, p<0.001) and menstruation and working women were 16.5 times more likely to have adequate knowledge (OR 16.5, 95% CI 1.5-181.7, p 0.022). Conclusion: The inadequate knowledge of females may be attributed to misconceptions regarding menstruation due to poor access to health-related education and a culture of silence around sexual and reproductive health issues. Systemic integration of adequate menstrual socialization at homes and in schools can change the discourse around sexual and reproductive health in the societal landscape. Future studies may explore health-information seeking practices of females from diverse socio-demographics to identify the sources and types of knowledge that they seek on female reproductive health issues.
This quantitative study was conducted to explore the gender differences in the fear of crime victimization and associated precautionary behaviours. A questionnaire was designed and administered on 180 students of public and private universities in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Data analyzed in SPSS showed a significant difference in the responses of males and females where females were more worried and felt more unsafe about being a victim of a crime than males. More females observed precautionary behaviours to avoid being a victim of a crime in relation to the males. The females were fearful of crime related to use of public transport, sexual and gender based attack whereas males feared verbal abuse by strangers or acquaintances. It was discussed that females, being members of a marginalized and vulnerable group, may consider themselves as potential victims to crimes, and therefore exhibit a high fear of crime along with higher incidence of precautionary behaviour. Furthermore, in the patriarchal structure of the Pakistani society, the socio-cultural norms and traditional gender role socialization teach the boys to be dominant, risk-takers and fearless and the girls to be submissive, risk avoiding and fearful which tends to restrict the mobility and freedom of females.
IntroductionThe environment at medical colleges is competitive and typically generates higher stress levels. Both academic and psychosocial stresses appear to play a role, and the resourceful students who are able to employ effective coping strategies to deal with their stress are shown to outperform their peers in the academic settings.ObjectivesObjective: To determine the Association of Perceived Stress and Coping Strategies with Depressive symptoms in students at a private medical college in IslamabadMethodsFourth and Final year medical students of Foundation university medical college were enrolled in the study. Beck’s Depression Inventory was used to assess the depressive symptoms, Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) was the tool used to look for the perceived stress and the coping strategies were assessed using the Brief COPE Inventory. Association of Perceived Stress and Coping Strategies with Depressive symptoms and other sociodemographic factors was established.ResultsOut of 262 medical students studied, 211 (80.5%) had no or mild depressive symptoms while 51 (19.5%) had moderate to severe depressive symptoms. 66 (25.2%) had low stress, 127 (48.4%) had moderate stress while 69 (26.3%) had high stress. Chi-square test revealed that perceived stress, self-distraction, active coping, denial, substance use, behavioral disengagement, positive reframing, acceptance, religion/ spirituality and self-blaming had statistically significant relationship with presence of depressive symptoms among the target population.ConclusionsConsiderable number of medical students had presence of moderate to severe depressive symptoms in our study. Perceived stress and some specific kinds of coping strategies had significant association with presence of depressive symptoms among target population
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