CONTEMPORARY WOMEN’S ISSUES: HEALTH AND LEGAL ASPECTS

CONTEMPORARY WOMEN’S ISSUES: HEALTH AND LEGAL ASPECTS
Besides the social science studies, various national committees and commissions have produced important reports stating the status of women in contemporary Indian society.
The most important of these have been that of the Committee on the Status of Women in India, 1974, National Commission on Self-Employed Women, 1988, National Perspective Plan for Women, 1988, National Commission for Women, 1992 etc.
While the social scientists, policy planners and the media generated enormous data on women’s issues in India, since late nineteen seventies there have emerged numerous women’s organisations in various parts of the country.
These organisations have made their presence felt through various mass mobilisations and protests against women’s discrimination in the society. Since the beginning of 1980s there has been increasing awareness among the women, both in the rural and urban areas, though in varying degrees. They have raised the issues-related to the socio-economic injustice faced by them in the society.
With the growing awareness women’s issues have come to the fore and following states the various issues:
Women and Health
In India, within the given social setting there is considerable low access to medical care especially for vulnerable section like women. Women belonging to the low strata of the socio-economic hierarchy and to the rural areas have been the critical manifestation of this aspect. Women’s health is affected by a series of interrelated economic and Women and Society.
Cultural issues like levels of earnings and educational background and “the attitudes to marriage, age of marriage, value attached to fertility and sex of the child, the pattern of family organisations and the ideal role demanded of Women by social conventions”. Hence we are to examine the question of women’s health within the given context. In this section we shall be examining some of the important features of women’s health-status in India.