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Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) have not been very successful in gender mainstreaming. This article will show, with examples from the PRSPs of Honduras, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, how gender issues have been largely ignored in the design, poverty analysis, and policy actions of PRSPs. It will be argued that the reason for this failure is only partially a lack of political will and gender expertise on the side of the governments and PRS teams. Rather, the main reason for the failure of integrating gender in PRSPs is the overall framework of PRSPs, which does not allow for gender mainstreaming in macroeconomic policies. The core of the framework consists of narrowly defined macroeconomic targets and policies, while giving less importance to broader socio-economic objectives and policies. This, in turn, tends to shift gender entirely to a secondary, social concern, rather than being part and parcel of the core of the poverty reduction framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most low- and middle-income countries have implemented mass education reforms in the last few decades. Demographers and policymakers have posited that mass schooling would enhance women's autonomy and, there fore, accelerate pop u lation trans for ma tions in the Global South. However, gains in women's school ing may have unex pected impli ca tions for female autonomy in contexts where hypergamy norms--the ideal that men should marry down and women should marry up in education and other markers of status--are still dominant. This study addresses difficulties in evaluating the causal impact of additional education on women's autonomy by leveraging the timing of compulsory schooling reforms in three Latin American countries: Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru. Using Demographic and Health Surveys, I implement an instrumental variable design using random exposure to compulsory schooling laws as an instrument for years of education. Results show that for women who entered the school system as a result of compulsory reforms, further schooling decreased their level of autonomy in all countries--especially among women from rural Bolivia and Peru. Additional analyses suggest these results are explained by changes in the selection into schooling and the formation of unions defying hypergamy norms.Together, these findings highlight the importance of examining there turns tomass schooling considering population heterogeneity and the contextual meaning of women's education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses a spectacle, a wrestling match, that brings out the problem of violence against women and the role of activist organisations such as the Centro de Información y Desarrollo de la Mujer (CIDEM) to raise awareness among people and to influence the Bolivian state to change the gender of the law. In effect, it considers CIDEM's vigilant role, by visualising cases of femicides in partnership with the press, is translated in wrestling matches. The article considers one such wrestling match I witnessed in El Alto, Bolivia, and argues that CIDEM's vigilant role extends to overlooking and complementing the vigilant roles of the state and customary legal systems in El Alto that are unable to prevent femicides: women being killed by men because of their gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grandparents play a critical role in the reorganisation of care brought about by the increasing migration of women. Yet, they are conspicuously absent from the migration literature. This article looks at the role of grandparents, particularly grandmothers, in caring for migrants' children. It draws on a case study of a rapidly urbanising neighbourhood in Bolivia, and identifies grandmothers as both givers and receivers of care. Through a typology of different types of living arrangements, the article seeks to identify the processes that lead to greater vulnerability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Law of Popular Participation (LPP) in Bolivia can be seen as the first significant attempt by policy makers in the region to mainstream gender into a national development initiative. The LPP seeks to devolve power and resources from the national to the local level. It is the first Bolivian law to be explicitly couched in gendered terms, and aims to increase the prominence of women in local political and development spheres. However, as I suggest in this article, in some respects the LPP has actually had the effect of displacing women from the very site of their traditional forms of political activism, at community level. As greater status, power, and resources have been devolved to politics at this level, men have become more prominent in this previously neglected, 'feminised' sphere. The article argues that, to some extent, the goal of mainstreaming gender into national development via the LPP was missed. Reasons include a lack of effective and systematic gendered analysis of the structural barriers to women's participation, and the failure to support gender mainstreaming, and women's participation, through capacity building at all levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

OBJECTIVE:: To describe the prevalence of overweight, obesity and being thin in adolescents of La Paz City, Bolivia. DESIGN:: Cross-sectional study, clustered sampling. SETTING:: La Paz, Bolivia, August-September 2003. SUBJECTS:: Height and weight of 525 adolescents (mean age 16?y; s.d.±1.3) attending public and private schools were measured; sociodemographic characteristics were assessed with a short questionnaire. RESULTS:: The present study reveals that 9.3%(±2.5) of the sample are thin adolescents; 19.8%(±3.4) is the overall prevalence of overweight and 2.3%(±1.3) the overall prevalence of obesity. The odds of being thin were higher among those working (P=0.03) and among those of higher age (P<0.001). The odds of being overweight were higher among female subjects (P<0.001). The odds of being obese were higher among younger adolescents (P=0.046) and among the more wealthy ones (P=0.044). CONCLUSIONS:: A large prevalence of 22%overweight/obesity in adolescents from La Paz City was observed. The findings support the need of enhanced nutritional surveillance and interventions particularly in female adolescents.European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2005) 59, 82-87. doi:10.1038/sj.ejcn.1602040 Published online 11 August 2004 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Social inequalities in obesity have been observed not only by gender but also between ethnic groups. Evidence on combined dimensions of inequality in health, and specifically including indigenous populations, is however scarce, and presents a particularly daunting challenge for successful prevention and control of obesity in Bolivia, as well as worldwide. Objective: The aims of this study were i) to examine intersectional inequalities in obesity and ii) to identify the factors underlying the observed intersectional inequalities. Methods: An intersectional approach study was employed, using the information collected in a cross-sectional community-based survey. The sample consisted of youth and adults with permanent residence in Cochabamba department (N = 5758), selected through a multistage sampling technique. An adapted version of the WHO-STEPS survey was used to collect information about Abdominal obesity and risk factors associated. Four intersectional positions were constructed from gender (woman vs. men) and ethnic group (indigenous vs. mestizo). Joint and excess intersectional disparities in obesity were estimated as absolute prevalence differences between binary groups, using binomial regression models. The Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition was applied to estimate the contributions of explanatory factors underlying the observed intersectional disparities, using Oaxaca command in Stata software v15.1. Results: The prevalence of abdominal obesity had a higher prevalence in mestizos (men 35.01% and women 30.71%) as compared to indigenous (men 25.38% and women 27.75%). The joint disparity was estimated at 7.26 percentage points higher prevalence in the doubly advantaged mestizo men than in the doubly disadvantaged indigenous women. The gender referent disparity showed that mestizo-women had a higher prevalence than indigenous-women. The ethnic referent disparity showed that mestizo-men had a higher prevalence than indigenous men. The behavioural risk factors were the most important to explain the observed inequalities, while differences in socioeconomic and demographic factors played a less important role. Conclusion: Our study illustrates that abdominal obesity is not distributed according to expected patterns of structural disadvantage in the intersectional space of ethnicity and gender in Bolivia. In the Cochabamba case, a high social advantage was related to higher rates of abdominal obesity, as well as the behavioural risk factors associated with them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]