Gender Bias in Child Deprivation: A Study in the Context of West Bengal, India

Abstract

The early childhood years are a period of great opportunity but are also of great vulnerability. Responsive caring is important for children to live, learn, grow, and develop to their full potential. Being healthy at childhood is the crucial requirement for a nation to be healthy throughout. But children in developing countries are earmarked to be vulnerable to the adverse socioeconomic conditions. Without the availability of proper nutritional diet and immunization, children remain underweight, stunted, and wasted. In order to capture their condition, analyzing their health status is inevitable. Further, since discrimination based on gender in every sphere of life be it at home or outside is quite evident in a patriarchal nation like India, therefore, an analysis of the child health based on their gender gains momentum. Thus, the present study analyzes the status of child health in West Bengal from a multidimensional perspective and disaggregates it on the basis of their gender in order to catch the effect of discrimination persisting in society. In order to do so, we have considered the NFHS unit level data of the latest two rounds. The present study contributes to the existing literature from methodological perspective as well as by formulating a child deprivation index using a multidimensional approach. Together with that, we have unearthed the factors influencing the health status of the children based on their gender.

Citation

Kumbhakar, S. and Das, P. (2023), "Gender Bias in Child Deprivation: A Study in the Context of West Bengal, India", Chakraborty, C. and Pal, D. (Ed.) Gender Inequality and its Implications on Education and Health, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 101-112. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83753-180-620231010