Beliefs and Practices in Women Health
Rural women’s health is an infinitely broad topic. Many Indian women have come from circumstances in which women have limited access to healthcare. Traditionally, there has been discrimination towards women in decision-making; access to resources such as food, education and health care; job opportunities; and in child-rearing and parenting. However, women’s health in rural areas affects everything in their environment from their families to their economies and vice versa. A woman’s health, especially among the poor and illiterate, is often neglected not just by her family but by the woman herself. She is taught not to complain and if she does then she is directed either to use condiments in the kitchen or try faith healing.
Man is unique in that he has a distinct cultural environment of his own. This includes all the conditions in which men are born, brought up, live, work, procreate and perish. Culture as an environment is deeply related to the health of humans. It includes patterns of social organizations designed to regulate a particular society; one can understand the behaviour of people belonging to various sections and predict how an individual of a particular section will react in a given situation. With our knowledge of health, the treatment of diseases among ignorant peoples appears to be strange since they frequently follow practices of praying, wearing of amulets or consulting an exorcist who recites certain verbal formula. Hence, we can say that beliefs and cultural practices are predominately playing significant roles in the human health more peculiarly in the health of women.
Many rural people did not know about the services set up for them at sub-centres and PHC by the government because they did not see any evidence of these services being provided for them. As a part of the awareness programmes, the health workers (ANM) have been organizing to several exposure trips at the villages. It was there that the women were informed about the specifics of various services supposed to be made available to them. This encouraged some of them to ask questions and report on the situation in their PHC. They explained that though a nurse did visit their village it was not a daily visit, nor did she go beyond a certain point in the village, and certainly did not take a round of the village. They made a show of doing their duty by providing nominal services.
A variety of factors, including an older population, a limited supply of health care providers, and further distances from health care resources may contribute to special health concerns for people in non-metropolitan areas. Access to health care and social services are critical issues for rural women.
Belief is the psychological state in which an individual is convinced of the truth of a proposition. Like the related concepts truth, knowledge, and wisdom, there is no precise definition of belief on which scholars agree, but rather numerous theories and continued debate about the nature of belief 1.
The cultural phenomenon of social organization, according to Giger and Davidhizar (2004), includes groups in the social environment that influence cultural development and identification. The family, an important aspect of the social organization phenomenon, strongly influences cultural behavior through a process of socialization or enculturation of children and group members (Giger & Davidhizar; Niska, 1999). These learned cultural behaviors guide individuals through life situations, events and health practices. Understanding family from a cultural perspective is a significant element in providing nursing care to Mexican-Americans since Giger and Davidhizar identify the family as being most values in this culture.
Environmental control is defined by Giger and Davidhizar (2004) as the ability of persons within a particular cultural heritage to plan activities that control their environment as well as their perception of one’s ability to direct factors in the environment. Kuipers’ (1999) discussion of this model, in relation to Mexican-American culture, emphasized the construct of environmental control with a focus on locus-of-control, health beliefs, and folk medicine. Locus-of-control explains the way in which individuals, within their cultural environment, perceive their ability to control what happens to them and to their health. Health may be viewed as being dependent on outside forces or their own actions (Bundek et al., 1993). Beliefs about health and illness, which are components of environmental control, affect health practices, use of health resources, and a person’s response to experiences of both health and illness (Giger & Davidhizer, 2004; Northam, 1996). A third component of environmental control, folk medicine, includes alternative therapies such as using herbs and teas or visiting a cultural folk healer.
Objectives:
1. Exploration of women beliefs on health, risk and their relationship to lifestyles;
2. Elicitation of their views across a range of health-related behaviours and practices, especially puberty, menstruation, pregnancy and child rearing, and assessment of the potential for the positive promotion of women health in these and other areas of her sexual health.
3. Identification of the sources of information and influences on the development of health beliefs amongst women, particularly with respect to common elements in attitudes to risk-taking across a number of health beliefs and practices.
4. To focus on what women themselves know and want to know, including the salience of health, and the relevance of health-related knowledge in their lives
Hypothesis:
1. There is a positive relationship between social beliefs and cultural practices of a given society
2. Positive relationship may be observed among the social beliefs and cultural practices and various other factors such as caste, religion, social and traditional customs in society
3. The explanation for the persistence of belief systems is that people remain committed to them, but for this commitment to last long, the belief system must be validated
Research Design:
A quantitative and qualitative study, building on our previous work in this area, concerning the knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and practices of female children and young women to health, risk and lifestyles. A guiding methodological principle underpinning the study was the development of a sensitive research design for rather than on women: a study grounded not simply in what women know or need to know, but also in what they want to know and feel to be important in the context of their everyday lives. The methods enabling these principles to be taken forward are described below.
a) Area of the Study:
The Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh consists of ten districts namely Hyderabad, Ranagareddy, Mahabubnagar, Medak, Adilabad, Nizamabad, Karimnagar, Warangal, Nalgonda, and Khammam. From this region, the village Ramchandrapur in Koheda Mandal of Karimnagar district has been randomly selected as an area of the study.
b) Universe & Sampling:
According to 2001 census, the village Ramchandrapur has an approximate population of 1840 who from nearly 550 families. This village has a primary health centre (PHC), but lacks a major hospital within a range of 35 kms. And this village has been selected as universe for this study.
So for this study, the researcher adopted stratified-proportionate random method of sampling based on caste composition of the villagers and selected the respondents from the families mentioned in the habitation list of Ramchandrapur. This village population data was collected from Supraja Seva Samithi, a voluntary organization, which is working in the region for the last 10 years in the fields of health, education and environmental protection. The list consists of various caste grouping and from which proportionate stratified samples were selected. Then a list of about 181 respondents was prepared for data collection. Therefore, it is obvious that an attempt has been made to present a general picture of community data and on the basis of which, views and attitudes of the respondents were taken into consideration.
C) Tools of Data Collection:
As the research is qualitative and quantitative, non-participant observation and interview schedule was adopted for the collection of primary data. The aspects that will cover in the interview schedule were defined under two parts, one is for socio-economic and cultural status of respondents such as name, sex, age, social status, education, religion, income, nature and type of the house, etc. and the other for socio-cultural beliefs and practice patterns in health and the related treatment of the villagers.
D) Analysis and interpretation of data:
After arranging the collected data through tabulation and classification, they were analyzed and interpreted in the socio-cultural context so as to give a scientific basis to the study. Although statistical methods like frequencies, percentages, means, standard deviations, t-test, chi-squire and ANOVA have been used in the study, they were applied in a relevant way.
Findings:
Socio-Economic Profile:
During the field work, observed that 22 castes were appeared and most of the respondent belongs to the BC castes like Yadava, Gouda, Munnuru Kapu, Vishwa Brahmin, Mudiraj and a insignificant number of people belongs to
