Suchergebnisse

NHS charging for 'overseas visitors' is recognised as deterring migrants from accessing necessary health care. Even though maternity care does not have to be paid in advance, fear of four-figure bills and Home Office sanctions against people with unpaid debts has significant adverse effects on women affected. Undocumented migrant women, without the right to work or benefits, are among the most excluded and vulnerable people living in the UK today, risking destitution especially in pregnancy. Despite government guidance, hospital charging procedures pay scant attention to the welfare of vulnerable migrants, with women who are unable to pay harassed by debt collectors. Charging such women deters them from accessing maternity care and has a negative impact on their physical and mental health. The article, based on a study of women who were charged, argues that charging for maternity care undermines NHS principles and inherently discriminates against women.

State concern over the implications of the uses of new reproductive technologies has prompted expressions of bourgeois liberal ideas on the management of reproduction, notably in Britain in the Warnock Report. There has been a strong 'naturalist' opposition to the use of the technologies from a wide range of peo ple, but dominated by a version of feminism which sees the technology as part of a continuing male conspiracy against women. A response to both positions is calledfor integrating an understanding of the place of medicine in the social organisation of reproduction to challenge the criteria by which people are con sidered eligible to be parents.

Rural women in Kenya are burdened by heavy workloads, often being responsible not just for attending to domestic needs — including provision of food for their families — but having as well to work as casual labourers. They are further hampered by lack of access to income obtained from the sale of cash crops grown by the household, even though they often contribute labour to the cultivation of such crops. In these and other ways they suffer the impact of gender relations which place them firmly in a position of economic subordination. The Kenyan government has acknowledged that women are 'disadvantaged' and has made a formal commitment to alleviate their situation. Economic and political crises, however, have tended to displace attention from the needs of oppressed groups in Kenya, including women. But it would be questionable in any case that the prevailing perception of a solution based on 'integrating women into development' would bring about significant change. Rayah Feldman examines a set of organisations on which government policy towards women has been focused: women's groups coordinated by the Kenyan Women's Bureau. Her analysis suggests that while assisting some women to generate extra income, their impact is sparse, uneven and often of dubious value. Seldom indeed do their projects, even when successful in terms of profitability, approach the requirements for fundamentally altering the condition of subordination of rural women.

Governmental policy in Tanzania has decreed that Ru land tenure shall be governed by customary land tenure rules. These rules are incompatible with conditions of land shortage arising from agricultural development within an individual & incipiently capitalist framework, for they do not deal with market land values, individual demands, or social obligation. A rapidly developing multitribal maize farming area in Ismani, Tanzania, is typical of the problems. Customary land tenure was based on membership in the political social unit of the tribe. The village development committees do not have the same sense of social responsibility in distributing land. With technological advances, the land has acquired exchange value. Tractor & ox-plow farming require the land to be cleared & other improvements to be made. In theory, buying or renting land from an individual, other than the VDC, is assumed to be illegal. Therefore, as land has become scarce, land transactions have been carried out secretly & are subject to cheating & insecurity. The only means of securing title to a piece of land is by taking a dispute to court. The courts rely on determining a euphemistic figure called 'returning the cost of clearing' for determining the true value of the transaction. The system is inadequate as the court system is an expensive & ineffecient manner to deal with a problem which stems from the legal prohibitions about buying & selling land openly. 1 Table. Modified HA.