Matching Items (2)
Description
The first global estimate of maternal mortality in 1985 revealed that over half a million women die each year due to pregnancy related causes. Although a relatively small figure compared to the deaths attributed to such diseases as malaria and HIV, this was new data. New data meant attraction from powerful international agency leaders, which eventually led to the formation of a global effort called the Safe Motherhood Initiative (SMI). In turn, the global SMI provided the framework for the World Health Organization's (WHO) Millennium Development Goal 5 (MDG 5). Both of these global campaigns, which were largely implemented through advocacy efforts, adopted time sensitive goals aimed specifically to decrease maternal mortality. Although the placement of maternal health on the public health agenda was an extraordinary accomplishment for women's health advocates, a historical examination of safe motherhood efforts will reveal that these advocacy techniques would not keep maternal health on the public health agenda. Over two decades of unsuccessful efforts to reduce maternal mortality have shown that advocacy efforts are not the answer to actually decreasing maternal mortality ratios. Due to the intrinsic difficulties in measuring maternal mortality, and the public health sector's emphasis in prioritizing the political agenda based on such measurements, maternal health has arguably fallen in last place on the agenda. This thesis will explore how the concern for mothers influenced the formation of MDG 5, and how MDG 5 has been translated into local practices. A case study of the Pan American Health Organization's advocacy effort also called the Safe Motherhood Initiative explores the underlying, culturally complex problems that are hindering progress of MDG 5. The results show that the lack of comprehensive reproductive health services for women is not only due to poor health systems in place, which is what many safe motherhood 5 efforts have attempted to address, but also due to cultural traditions and laws on sexual and reproductive health forbidding women to obtain the care they need to survive.
ContributorsAntonios, Nathalie (Author) / Hurlbut, Ben (Thesis director) / Brian, Jennifer (Committee member) / Ellison, Karin (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2013-12
Description
Through critical discourse analysis, this thesis explores the construction of poverty and development within and across the United Nations Millennium Development Goals and the proposed post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals texts. The proposed post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals frame the international development landscape for the next 15 years, therefore it becomes imperative for civil society to understand their dominant economic schemes for poverty alleviation in order to adopt or oppose similar methods of poverty abatement. Deductively, this thesis investigates Keynesianism and neoliberalism, the dominant economic discourses whose deployments within the goals have shaped transnational frameworks for interpreting and mitigating poverty. It assesses the failures of the Millennium Development Goals, as articulated both by its creators and critics, and evaluates the responsiveness of the United Nations in the constitution of the proposed post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals in relation to these critiques through the lens of liberal feminist and World Social Forum discourses. These activist and oppositional social discourses embody competing values, representations, and problem-solution frames that challenge and resist the dominant economic discourses in both sets of goals. Additionally, this thesis uses an inductive approach to critically analyze both sets of goals in order to identify any emergent discursive frameworks grounded in each text that assist in understanding the problems of, and solutions to, poverty.
ContributorsBriant, Janie (Author) / Nadesan, Majia (Thesis advisor) / Kelley, Douglas L. (Committee member) / Keahey, Jennifer (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015