Addressing social and gender norms to improve uptake of maternal health services in Mali: a descriptive study of CARE's Project Hope for Mothers and Newborns (PEMN).

This study examines the design and implementation of a maternal mortality prevention intervention in central Mali. It uses Project Hope for Mothers and Newborns (PEMN) as a case study to examine the context around implementation, with special emphasis on the role of social, gender and power norms in meeting programme objectives. Interventions to strengthen the health system and workforce were coupled with a social norms change approach to catalyse the personal transformation of staff, community-level health workers and communities via critical reflection and dialogue on gender and social power norms related to maternal health.

Institutionalizing community-focused maternal, newborn, and child health strategies to strengthen health systems: A new framework for the Sustainable Development Goal era.

Background: Stronger health systems, with an emphasis on community-based primary health care, are required to help accelerate the pace of ending preventable maternal and child deaths as well as contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The success of the SDGs will require unprecedented coordination across sectors, including partnerships between public, private, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). To date, little attention has been paid to the distinct ways in which NGOs (both international and local) can partner with existing national government health systems to institutionalize community health strategies.

'People insult her as a sexy woman': sexuality, stigma and vulnerability among widowed and divorced women in Oromiya, Ethiopia.

Widowed and divorced women, sometimes referred to as 'female heads of household', are one of the most impoverished and marginalised groups in the world. Widowed and divorced women are often overlooked in the literature or are seen primarily as economically or socially marginalised beings; their sexuality is rarely addressed. In an effort to understand the experiences and challenges faced by such women, we conducted and analysed four focus-group discussions, seven in-depth interviews and four interactive activities with 32 widowed and divorced women and with 25 other community members in Oromiya, Ethiopia.

The influence of intrafamilial power on maternal health care in Mali: perspectives of women, men and mothers-in-law.

Context: Evidence from diverse settings suggests that women often have limited control over their own reproductive health decisions. To increase uptake of preventive services and behaviors, it is important to understand how intrafamilial power dynamics and the attitudes of women, their husband and their mother-in-law are associated with maternal health practices.

Methods: In 317 households in two rural districts of central Mali, women who had given birth in the previous year, their husband and their mother-in-law each completed a survey gauging their attitudes toward constructs of gender, power and health.

Pile sorting innovations: exploring gender norms, power and equity in sub-Saharan Africa.

Understanding gender norms, power and equity is important for developing successful sexual and reproductive health interventions. However, little attention has been given to how to capture the gender ideals and imbalances that inform these relationships in low resource settings. Pile sorting exercises were conducted in four gender-segregated focus groups in Ethiopia and Kenya.

The influence of perceptions of community norms on current contraceptive use among men and women in Ethiopia and Kenya.

The paper uses data from Ethiopia and Kenya to examine how perceptions of community norms differentially shape contraceptive use among men and women. Women whose current number of sons is lower than their perception of the community ideal had lower odds of reporting contraceptive use, while women whose own personal ideal number of sons is lower than the community ideal had greater odds of reporting contraceptive use. Men and women in Kenya were influenced more by their perception of their social network's approval of family planning than by their own approval of family planning.

Constructs of power and equity and their association with contraceptive use among men and women in rural Ethiopia and Kenya.

Using samples of reproductive aged men and women from rural Ethiopia and Kenya, this study examines the associations between two scales measuring balances of power and equitable attitudes within relationships and modern contraceptive use. The scales are developed from the Sexual and Reproductive Power Scale (SRPS) and Gender Equitable Male (GEM) scale, which were originally developed to measure relationship power (SRPS) among women and gender equitable attitudes (GEM) among men. With the exception of Ethiopian women, a higher score on the balance of power scale was associated with significantly higher odds of reporting modern contraceptive use.