Recommended reading
BRIDGE Report 38: Challenges to women's reproductive health: maternal mortality
Socioeconomic, cultural and political factors affect women's vulnerability to maternal death
Authors:
Z. Oxaal; S. Baden
Publisher:
BRIDGE, 1996
Why, despite continual technological and medical advance, do one out of every fifty women in developing countries still die in pregnancy and childbirth? This paper explains how socio-economic, cultural and political factors make women vulnerable to maternal death. It also explores their capacity to access maternal health services and gender biases within these services. Women's domination by men and their inferior status in society has many implications for maternal mortality, including lack of control in sexual relations and decisions about their own health, lack of access to education, and being subject to men's physical and economic control.
The paper recommends that health spending must deliver more quality care to women, and policy must be shifted towards overcoming women's lack of physical, sexual, economic, social, and political autonomy. A variety of long and short-term strategies must be pursued to both directly and indirectly promote safe motherhood, such as guaranteeing women access to family planning and health services, improving women's educational attainment, self confidence, and decision-making capacities. [Summary adapted from Siyanda www.siyanda.org]
