DOHaD research in economics finds inequitable health and labour market outcomes but lacks insight into structural factors that contribute to disparities. In practice, social relations like racism, sexism, and ableism can translate into inequitable ‘returns to investment’ in ‘human capital’. DOHaD literature in economics could contribute more to understanding the determinants of health. It is limited by a narrow focus on molecular factors and the decontextualised use of demographic variables, which should be interpreted as proxies for hierarchical power relations. Excluding systems of oppression from analyses renders inequity-generating social structures less visible instead of clarifying their unjust consequences. Egalitarian economic approaches can address the failure to adequately integrate social structures with historically grounded, socially informed analyses. This chapter demonstrates how by tracing the devaluation of reproductive labour in economic thought to the reduction of women and girls to their reproductive roles in the DOHaD literature. The marginalisation of women’s labour and of women’s economic research contributes to the dehumanising instrumentalisation of women in orthodox economic research in DOHaD. The analysis reveals risks for women and girls, linking DOHaD literature to debates about ’foetal personhood’, women’s autonomy, and gender inequity.

Home to 60 per cent of the world’s population, Asia is the locus for significant global challenges such as the future of work, gender inequality, inequitable access to health care, and climate change. For these entrenched socio-economic challenges, the time is ripe for philanthropist and philanthropic capital to taking a leading role in addressing and resolving these issues. Connecting like-minded individuals and building bridges to collaboration is one of the core functions of ecosystem builders like the Asian Venture Philanthropy Network (AVPN). Since its founding in 2011, AVPN has grown into Asia’s largest social investment network, with over 600 members active across 33 markets. It has incubated several successful partnerships, but the journey has not always been smooth sailing. As the network has grown and evolved, so has its value proposition and role in the community. This chapter shares some of the lessons AVPN has learned in its journey to become an inclusive, responsive, and resilient ecosystem builder for philanthropy in Asia. It calls on philanthropists to build more intentional partnerships with ecosystem builders to facilitate more long-term, sustained change on the ground. The chapter points out that sector intermediaries should seek out opportunities to support philanthropists in building the community – the best way to resolve systemic development issues – rather than work alone.

Chapter 2 defines and describes the manifestations of patriarchy and inequality in India. It describes the system of patriarchy in rural India and how widespread and entrenched patriarchal norms generate a patriarchal social order that centers on women in the household. It demonstrates how patriarchal norms have enabled the use of violence to control and dominate women, including by internalizing the acceptability of this means of coercion. It further highlights the role of legal and political institutions in perpetuating this social order. Finally, it documents the state of women’s and men’s political participation in rural India, revealing substantial disparities in political participation between men and women and, even more strikingly, between different forms of participation within women.

This chapter provides and overview of feminist and queer anthropologies that engaged with questions of gender and sexualities from the early 1970s onward, highlighting the role of ethnography as an epistemology pushing theoretical debate beyond anthropology.

Using quantitative data, we construct an explanation of the adoption of policies that address the intersection of firearms and domestic violence. Removing guns from perpetrators of domestic violence, including domestic violence among unmarried couples, decreases intimate partner deaths. Beyond the very positive effects that laws on DV gun ownership by domestic violence perpetrators can have to make women safer, the sponsorship and passage of these laws over the last thirty years have increased. Using our original dataset of domestic violence firearm law (DVFL) enactments, we analyze the circumstances under which states adopt these laws. We find evidence that state and federal factors that influence policy adoption employ a set of political and demographic indicators as independent variables, particularly, the number of gun-related homicides, legislative partisan control, citizen ideology, federal legislation, and election years influence the likelihood of DVFL enactments. We also find support for the effects of vertical policy diffusion but not for horizontal policy diffusion across states. We found no effects associated with support for gun ownership or the percent of women state legislators.

We analyze the gap between public policies regarding domestic violence and the prosecution and defense of such policies in the courtroom. The prosecutors and public defenders we surveyed are on the front lines of domestic violence cases as they enter courtroom; nearly 25 percent of their caseloads involved domestic violence cases and of those, about 50 percent involved repeat offenders. We utilize the information from the public defenders and district attorneys to understand what types of domestic violence cases they see, who the victims are, and what happens to those who are convicted of domestic violence crimes. We also analyze the reported outcomes of domestic violence cases to see whether specific domestic violence laws have any influence on the punishment of domestic violence offenses. We present the first-hand perspectives of some of the individuals who are involved with domestic violence cases on a daily basis. We find that the implementation of public policies regarding domestic violence, such as mandatory arrest and gun removal, is implemented inconsistently across states, and we demonstrate that different policies and implementation practices lead to diverse outcomes of domestic violence cases in the courtroom.

Solomon Islands has often been seen as exemplifying wider concerns regarding customary land tenure, economic development and political instability in the southwest Pacific. Locals express concern regarding inequality in land control at multiple scales, while aid donors urge people to register land as a means to increase legal certainty, build peace and render land more ’marketable’. This chapter situates debates about land in Solomon Islands within wider global debates regarding customary tenure, gender inequality and state regulation. It highlights a long-standing divide in feminist debates, between those who perceive land tenure in terms of a hierarchically ordered and gendered ‘bundle of rights’, and those who perceive land as subject to fluid, negotiable claims. Drawing insights from legal geography, political ecology and feminist scholarship on legal pluralism, it suggests that a focus on the ways in which ‘access’ to resources is transformed into state-sanctioned ‘property’ recognises that property is negotiable while also highlighting factors that contribute to inequality. This approach also directs attention to the role of scholars in the formation of property.

This chapter focuses on the reconfiguration of land tenure and authority in Marovo Lagoon, a rural area subject to widespread and destructive industrial logging. Women as a social group are known to be largely excluded from formal negotiations regarding logging, and this chapter considers the extent to which this can be traced to a flawed legislative framework, to patriarchal kastom or the erosion of women’s rights by colonisation. Drawing on archival and ethnographic work, it demonstrates that missionaries and colonial officials recognised some idealisations of masculine authority while disregarding other forms of influence, facilitating a simplification of the land tenure system that has enabled some male leaders to consolidate their control over resources. The reproduction of particular idealisations of masculine authority over land continues today, and simultaneously constitutes land control as a masculine domain. While contemporary inequalities can be partially traced to the structural features of the property system, they also emerge from long-term processes of colonial intrusion, capitalist development and the erosion of important aspects of gendered attachments to land.

Pregnancy and motherhood are among the most cherished experiences of many women, but for many others are involuntary or unwanted. In either case, they are ideologically loaded and politically consequential. We review various lines of research across the social sciences documenting some of the myths surrounding pregnancy and motherhood, and some of the taboos, restrictions, and discrimination to which pregnant women and mothers are subjected.Our review encompasses opposition to abortion, ‘financial abortion’, paternalistic control over women’s reproductive and lifestyle choices, the motherhood penalty, and antagonism to women’s autonomy in conservative, libertarian, and populist politics. Drawing on social psychological theory, we argue that these phenomena have obvious roots in male dominance but also in idealised, reverential attitudes to pregnancy and motherhood. We conclude that unchecked, they will prevent women from achieving economic and social parity with men.

The chapter examines the historical theological and hagiographical as well as contemporary portrayal of the figure of Fatima. It analyzes the significance of Fatima’s presence in women-only majalis in the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom and Kuwait and to what extent her images and roles support women’s agency and contribute to the attainment of eschatological gender equality within Shi‘i ritual practices. Fatima is believed to be spiritually and, in some cases, physically present during commemoration ritual practices held by Shi‘i believers remembering the death of her son Imam Husayn. Fatima’s apparitions and other miraculous events during majalis are linked to the transformation of women’s empowerment within their communities. This is in addition to women’s recent increasing contribution to Shi‘i ritual practices, particularly those that traditionally have been regarded as male-dominated practices. Fatima’s apparitions are seen as a divine intervention in support of women’s transgression of these specific patriarchal religious boundaries. Women’s apparition narratives are instrumental in overcoming gender inequality in the performance of religious practices. Women’s claims for their right to participate in certain Shi‘i ritual practices is strengthened and, to a certain extent, legitimized through Fatima’s appearances.