Women and Children's Advocacy Centre

Gender Specific Risks

FGM, adolescent pregnancy , early marriage, female infanticide, maternal mortality, lack/ loss of legal rights/ representation, obstetric fistula , gender-based disinheritance, widowhood, infertility.

Gender Specific Risks are human rights violations and discrimination on the primary basis of gender. These types of risks can also include discrimination as a result of conditions possible only because of gender (i.e. pregnancy concerns). Many of these risk categories are linked.

Health Concerns: maternal mortality, adolescent pregnancy, obstetric fistula and infertility.

Cultural Practices: female genital mutilation, some legal rights abuses against women and early marriage.

Legal Discrimination: loss of legal rights, widowhood and gender-based disinheritance.

Some forms of Gender Specific Risks include the following:

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM): Includes procedures that intentionally alter or injure female genital organs for non-medical reasons. It is mostly carried out on girls sometime between infancy and 15 years of age. (World Health Organization, www.who.int, 2008)

An estimated 100-140 million girls and women worldwide are currently living with the consequences of FGM.

Adolescent Pregnancy: Teenage/Underage pregnancy, regardless of the age of the father.

13 million children are born to women under age 20 worldwide, more than 90% of these in developing countries. (Save the Children)
In Niger, 87% of women surveyed were married and 53% had given birth to a child before age 18.
2/3 of births to teenage girls in the US are fathered by adult men age 20 or older.

Read more about adolescent pregancy here


Early Marriage: Marriage before the age of 18. Child marriage is also identified by the Pan-African Forum against the Sexual Exploitation of Children as a type of commercial sexual exploitation of children. “Child marriage is driven by poverty and has many effects on girls' health: increased risk for sexually transmitted diseases, cervical cancer, malaria, death during childbirth, and obstetric fistulas. Girls' offspring are at increased risk for premature birth and death as neonates, infants, or children.” (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

In 2002, an estimated 52 million girls under the age of 18 were married, approximately 25,000 a day (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, www.cdc.gov, Emerging Infectious Diseases Volume 12. Number 11 – November 2006 Health Consequences of Child Marriage).

Maternal Mortality/Morbidity: “The death [or complications] of a woman while pregnant, or within 42 days of a termination of pregnancy... from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management, but not from accidental or incidental causes.” For every woman who dies as a result of pregnancy, some 30 women live but experience lasting morbidities as a result (UNFPA Maternal Mortality Update, 2002).

Pregnancy and childbirth claim the lives of 514,000 women each year: one woman every minute.
98% of these deaths occur in the developing world. Nearly all are preventable.
20 million women suffer from non-fatal complications of pregnancy.

Lack/loss of legal rights/representation: The denial or substandard quality of legal assistance or legal protection afforded women in some developing countries. Also including the denial of political participation. In some countries a woman’s testimony in court counts as half that of men and women experience far harsher sentences when convicted of a crime. (Read Anu's Story for a real life account of the risks faced by women and girls in societies where there is no representation.)

Gender-based Disinheritance: Depriving another person of personal property and land due to gender.

Widowhood: This becomes a risk category when a woman is denied rights or inheritance because of her social status, or the traditions and rituals of a tribe towards a widow are abusive. This is more and more relevant as the numbers of HIV/AIDS victims increases and cultural traditions are left unchecked. Widowhood is also a risk category as the woman becomes the primary source of income and must leave her children in order to work.

Infertility: Infertility becomes a factor when there is a risk of the women being thrown out of her home/family, her husband taking another wife or divorcing her because she has not borne children.

“Several years ago, Betty Chishava was thrown out of her family home in Harare, Zimbabwe, because she failed to fall pregnant and didn't want to sleep with her husband's brother. Desperate for an heir and a cure for the stigma of infertility, her husband Herbert took a new wife” (Nature; international weekly journal of science, www.nature.com, 31 August 2006)

Obstetric Fistula: The most severe injury during pregnancy, where a hole is made between the bladder or rectum and the vagina, causing the women to become incontinent. Other physical consequences: constant foul odor, frequent infections, infertility and early mortality. Several social consequences also affect the women including abandonment, divorce and isolation. Obstetric Fistula affects more than 2 million girls and women worldwide.

It is 90% reversible medically. However, due to the cost and trained professionals needed, it is seldom offered in the countries that could most benefit from the procedure. (UNFPA Maternal Mortality Update, 2002)

At least 2 million women in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Middle East (the Arab region) are living with fistula.
50,000 to 100,000 new cases develop each year. (www.UNFPA.org/mothers/fistula.htm, 11 June 2008)

Scripture

Malachi 2:10: “Don’t we all come from one Father? Aren’t we all created by the same God? So why can’t we get along? Why do we desecrate the covenant of our ancestors that binds us together?” (The Message)

Galatians 3:28: “There is [now no distinction] neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Amplified Bible)

Genesis 1:27: “God created Man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” (New American Standard Bible)

Genesis 5:2: “He created them male and female, and He blessed them and named them Man in the day when they were created.”(NASB)

Additional References: