Taking action: achieving gender equality and empowering women

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that people are able to have a satisfying and safe sex life and that they have the capability
to reproduce and the freedom to decide if, when, and how often to do so. Implicit are the
rights of men and women to be informed and to have access to safe, effective, affordable,
and acceptable methods of family planning of their choice and the right to appropriate
health-care services that enable women to safely go through pregnancy and childbirth
(WHO 1998b).
2. This section draws on Barroso and Girard (2003), a background paper commissioned
by the task force.
3. The definition of unmet need for contraception includes women at risk of pregnancy
who do not want another child (limiting desires) or want to postpone their next
birth at least two years (spacing desires) but who are not currently using a method of birth
control. Data on unmet need for contraception are available through Demographic and
Health Surveys conducted in a large number of developing countries by ORC-Macro.
4. The body mass index is calculated as weight in kilograms divided by squared height
in meters.
5. DALYs represent the sum of two components: the cumulative number of years lost
as a result of premature death and the cumulative number of healthy years of life lost to
disability. They are further adjusted for age and stage of life in which the disease or disability
emerges.
6. Interventions to improve nutrition go well beyond the health sector; these are discussed
at length in the report of the Task Force on Hunger (UN Millennium Project 2005d).
Chapter 5
1. These women also spend somewhat more time engaged in housework and other
miscellaneous activities.
2. Ellis and Hine (1998) find that for journeys as long as 30 kilometers, transport
charges are up to 2.5 times more expensive in Africa than in Asia.
3. When projects have addressed women’s needs, it has sometimes been for incorporating
domestic water uses in the design of irrigation systems, most obviously for washing
and bathing (Zwarteveen 1997). Although this recognition is important, planners have
ignored women’s need for water for productive purposes. Zwarteeveen (1997), for instance,
cites a 1990 study of an irrigation project in Burkina Faso where 3,00 women farmers,
organized into groups of 40, received water rights in only 1 percent of the total command
area.
4. Khandker, Lavy, and Filmer (1994) report that in the absence of a paved road, just
21 percent of rural girls ever attended school, whereas 58 percent of rural boys do. With
paved roads, enrollment rates would have increased to 48 percent for girls and 76 percent
for boys.
Chapter 6
1. Productive assets refer to forms of property—land, house, livestock—that can be
used to generate income and additional wealth.
2. See Tinker and Summerfield (1999) for additional information on the gender distribution
of property rights in parts of China, Lao PDR, and Viet Nam.
3. Matrilineal inheritance can be found in northern and central Kerala, in south India
and Meghalaya, in the northeast (Agarwal 1994, 1995), and in parts of Sri Lanka.
4. The Hindu Succession Act of 1956 made sons, daughters, and widows equal claimants
in a man’s separate property and in his share in the joint family property and gave
women full control over the land they inherited. The Muslim Personal Law Shariat Application
Act of 1937 also enhanced Muslim women’s property rights compared with those
prevailing under custom (Agarwal 2002).