Missing the Mark? Women and the Millennium Development Goals in Africa and Oceania

Naomi M. McPherson

• Publisher: Demeter Press
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781772580563
• Subtopic: Gynecology, Obstetrics & Midwifery
• Index: Social Sciences

In the year 2000, United Nations world leaders set out eight targets, the UN Millennium Development Goals, for achieving improved standards of living at the micro level in poorer nations around the globe, by the year 2015. The papers in this collection present fine-detailed ethnographic studies of cultures in Africa and Oceania, with a focus primarily on MDG 3, targeted to "promote gender equality and empower women" and MDG 5, targeted to "improve maternal health" to ascertain whether or not these goals have made or missed their mark. Ethnographic case studies located in Solomon Islands, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Ghana, Malawi, Cameroon, and South Ethiopia show that women in these cultures, regardless of nation state, face the same issues or problems—lack of empowerment, gender inequities, and inadequate access to cultural or state resources—to realize good health in general and good maternal and reproductive health, in particular.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Cosmopolitan Obstetrics and Women’s Lived Realities
• 1. Integrating Western Medicine and Local Practice: Contributions of a Mission-Based Maternity Clinic to Maternal and Child Health in the Lower Sepik Region of Papua New Guinea
• 2. Second Chance: Caring for Infected Mothers and Their Children in Mendi, Papua New Guinea
• 3. Faith, Hope, and Charity: Barriers to Condom Use among Women in Southern Malawi
• 4. Shortages, Priorities, and Maternal Health: Muddled Kastom and the Changing Status of Women in Malaita, Solomon Islands
• 5. Maternal Health (In)Equity in Mursi (Mun), Southern Ethiopia: Behind the Hype of “Harmful Cultural Practices”
• 6. Maternal Health Services Miss the Mark: An Ethnographic Case Study in Rural Ghana
• 7. Giving Birth in Douala, Cameroon: A Real Challenge
• 8. Throwing the Mother Out with the Bathwater: Vanuatu’s Breastfeeding Initiative in Theory and Practice
• 9. Reproductive Anomalies in the Marshall Islands
• 10. Examining the Intersections of Gender and Reproduction in Chuuk: Reflections on the Relevance and Utility of MDG Goals in a Small Island(s) Community
• Contributor Notes