Articles by Shireen J Jejeebhoy

In India, 29% of women aged 15–49 have experienced marital violence. Although crisis centres, known as helplines, exist to support those who experience violence, little is known about the experiences of women who use these services. Two rounds of surveys of 200 women who approached the government-sponsored helplines, conducted about four months apart, reveal that physical and sexual violence perpetrated by husbands and/or family members fell significantly in the inter-survey period. Women were also less likely to report suicidal thoughts and many reported a sense of economic security, happiness, self-confidence, and peace of mind. These findings underscore the importance of facilities offering women a haven in which they may learn about their options, have access to empathetic advocates, and secure support for addressing the violence they face at home.

This paper sheds light on the role of key indicators of rural women's empowerment in India in influencing their risk of experiencing forced sex within marriage. Additionally, it also highlights the continuing influence of dowry on forced sex experiences within marriage. It argues for programmes that enhance women's autonomy within their marital homes and encourage education. Further, programmes and laws targeting the prevention of dowry exchange need to be simultaneously developed.

Available programmatic sexual and reproductive health initiatives have focused disproportionately on the unmarried and on premarital sexual activity. Married young people have received little attention as a vulnerable group with distinct needs because marriage is assumed to be safe and because married adolescents and young people are assumed to face none of the stigma that their unmarried counterparts experience in accessing sexual and reproductive health services. Emerging evidence highlights that neither of these assumptions are tenable. Within the sub-population of young people, married young women constitute a group with distinct risks of human immunodeficiency virus and face a host of obstacles in making informed sexual and reproductive health decisions.

Although the NHFS has succeeded in updating and enhancing our data base, it has not been able to address some major reproductive health issues that lend themselves to being dealt with in large surveys. Among them, maternal health status and morbidity, and their correlates; quality of care concerns and women's ability to exercise reproductive choice are areas where data gaps continue to exist.

Priorities for the Family Welfare Programme Shireen J Jejeebhoy A growing recognition that population dynamics, quality of life and women's status are closely interrelated argues strongly for a fresh look at India's population programme. Strategies to broaden the narrow focus of services, and more important, to put women's reproductive heatth services and information needs in the forefront are urgently required. What are the gaps in women's reproductive health care? What are the constraints women face in accessing quality health care?