Rural women's sexuality, reproductive health, and illiteracy : a critical perspective on development / Gisele Maynard-Tucker.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Based on twenty-five years of fieldwork, Rural Women's Sexuality, Reproductive Health, and Illiteracy: A Critical Perspective on Development examines rural women's behaviors towards health in several developing countries. These women are confronted with many factors: gender inequalities, violence from partners, and lack of economic independence. The book also gives insight into the general weakness of the health systems in place and questions the progress of numerous international conferences ICPD (International Conference on Population and Development) and MDGs (Millennium Development Goals) along with WHO (The World Health Organization) Frame Work for Action, UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund) and CEDAW (Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women) all supporting women's empowerment as related to violence, education, and reproductive health.



Chapters provide numerous concrete examples and vignettes describing constraints on women in a variety of countries related to their intimate lives and their struggle between traditional and modern medicine. Widely practiced clandestine sex work is a challenge to HIV/AIDS programs. The book examines the women who choose clandestine sex work and their clients' sexual behavior and attitudes toward prostitution and HIV prevention. It also explores the negotiations between promiscuous, migratory men, and the ties of sexuality and fertility that women use to tie them to a male partner. The book argues for effective delivery of healthcare programs accompanied by multi-lateral responses from the civil society, governments, donors and agencies. Rural Women's Sexuality, Reproductive Health, and Illiteracy is a useful resource scholars, as well as consultants and staff working in development agencies and public health.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Anthropologist Maynard-Tucker (UCLA) has over 25 years of experience as a consultant in health and women's welfare development projects, both large and small, in many countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Her descriptions of donor and government incompetence, corruption, smugness, obliviousness to local conditions, and poor project design are vivid and compelling. Her portrayal of the nightmarish 1991 conditions in Haiti caused by the attitudes of the military dictatorship as well as the cynicism and callousness of USAID officials is particularly shocking and well explained. On the other hand, the author's generalizations about vastly different cultures and time periods, her blindness to the economic realities of structural adjustment policies and debt servicing, her failure to acknowledge possible value in the knowledge systems of indigenous peoples, and her silence on the dislocations caused by colonialism and neo-colonialism all mean that if the book is used with students, it should be in conjunction with the works of writers such as Vandana Shiva, Robert Chambers, Frances Moore Lappé, and Joseph Collins, all of whom would provide much-needed perspective and balance. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, faculty, professionals. --Ann Hibner Koblitz, Arizona State University