Safe child care and women's empowerment in the developing world

Abstract

Women's ability to provide for the health and well-being of their children and families is linked in complex ways to the degree of empowerment they experience. Empowerment for women in the developing world is a perplexing venture, hampered by patriarchal barriers and cultural confusion. Our purpose in conducting this research was to discover how disadvantaged Namibian women experienced empowerment when they had access to safe child care. Fifty-two women participated in the study. A qualitative design and ethnographic techniques were used to elicit women's experiences. Five themes, descriptive of women's empowerment, emerged from the data: (a) increasing vitality, (b) freedom from worry, (c) opportunities to increase financial security, (d) strengthened parenting competence, and (e) personal satisfaction and a sense of fulfillment. The findings add a voice from the developing world to the growing understanding of women's diverse journeys toward empowerment. Discussion focuses on the significance of the themes and implications for further research that promotes women's empowerment and community health.

Associations between women’s empowerment and child development, growth, and nurturing care practices in sub-Saharan Africa: A cross-sectional analysis of demographic and health survey data

“…Although more empowered women may remain responsible for domestic work (e.g., preparing meals, cleaning), their partners become responsible for early learning activities (e.g., reading, playing), and women defer to them to provide these activities to children. More empowered women receiving support with childcare are then better able to care for themselves and their families, having sufficient energy, time, and money for domestic work [ 60 ].…”

Implementing a plant hydraulics parameterization in the Canadian Land Surface Scheme Including biogeochemical Cycles (CLASSIC) v.1.4

“…CLASSIC employs the approach of Leuning (1995) for photosynthesis-canopy conductance coupling. Canopy conductance (g c , mol m −2 s −1 ) is calculated as a function of net photosynthesis rate (G canopy,net , mol CO 2 m −2 s −1 ), as below:…”

“…In addition to implementing soil moisture stress through SMS functions, optimality-based photosynthesis schemes can simulate stomatal conductance response to environmental conditions without explicitly including plant hydraulics (Cowan & Farquhar, 1977;Leuning, 1995;Medlyn et al, 2011). Optimality-based photosynthesis schemes simulate stomatal conductance response to the environment by maximizing an objective function (Dewar et al, 2009;Prentice et al, 2014;Buckley, 2017;Franklin et al, 2020).…”

“…The objective function (A-λT) in the CF approach maximizes carbon gain and postulates that plants try to maintain a constant marginal water use efficiency, λ. The CF approach effectively simulates the stomatal conductance response to meteorological conditions based upon available water (Farquhar et al, 1980) and has laid the foundation for several widely used photosynthesis schemes (Jacobs, 1994;Leuning, 1995;Medlyn et al, 2011). However, CF simulates an increase in g s under an increase in c a , a response contrary to most observations (Mott, 1988;Medlyn et al, 2001).…”

Youth Empowerment in Oppressive Systems: Opportunities for School Consultants

“…There is a need, therefore, to incorporate womenspecific issues into empowerment interventions (165). Improved education for women, including adult literacy and empowerment have been associated with improved child health (166,167) and reduced fertility (168). Although increasing educational opportunities for women is critically important, microenterprises have been identified as a faster route to improving health, on the hypothesis that women with income-generating power will spend their resources on family and children's health.…”