Book Description

WHO has compiled tables and graphs in a book reflecting various components of the health of women worldwide. These tables and graphs demonstrate that women continue to be denied their right to health--the most basic of human rights. Gender-related factors account, for the most part, for women's vulnerability, resulting in poorer health for females than males. They reveal the social discrimination women who experience. The book covers women's lifespan to illustrate not only inequity and discrimination throughout the years, but also the intergenerational effects, importance of adolescence, the broader context of women's reproduction, and the importance of elderly women. It first examines socioeconomic determinants of women's health, such as women's status, female literacy, income level, labor force participation, mother's education, and female-headed household. Next, it looks at infancy and childhood, specifically sex preference, breast feeding and weaning, child nutrition, sex-specific mortality, and sex-specific incidence rates for respiratory infections. It then moves on to explore adolescence. It covers the adult years prior to age 65 by focusing on women at work, pregnancy and childbirth, infections and chronic diseases (e.g., HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases, malaria, cancer, and smoking-related diseases), and violence and mental disorders (e.g., domestic violence, homicide, rape, depression, and drug and alcohol abuse). It concludes with tables and graphs on elderly women. They show life expectancy, disability-free life expectancy, widowhood, distribution of the elderly, elderly living in rural and urban areas, cardiovascular disease death rates, osteoarthritis, and a definite rheumatoid arthritis.