Skip to main content
Key Specialties
Cardiology Diabetology Endocrinology Gastroenterology Geriatrics and Gerontology Gynecology and Obstetrics Hematology Infectious Disease Internal Medicine Nephrology Neurology Oncology Pediatrics Respiratory Medicine Rheumatology Surgery
Congress Coverage
2024 ACC Congress 2023 ESMO Congress 2023 EASD Congress 2023 ERS Congress 2023 ESC Congress
Clinical Collections
Advances in Alzheimer’s

Keynote webinar | Spotlight on medication adherence

LIVE: Thursday 27th June 2024, 18:00-19:30 (CEST)
Join our expert panel to discover why you need to understand the drivers of non-adherence in your patients, and how you can optimize medication adherence in your clinics to drastically improve patient outcomes.
ADVANCED SEARCH
Log in
Top
Journal of Community Health
Published in: Journal of Community Health 2/2018

01-04-2018 | Original Paper

Physically Demanding Labor and Health Among Indigenous Women in the Ecuadorian Highlands

Authors: William F. Waters, Jessica Ehlers, Fernando Ortega, Anne Sebert Kuhlmann

Published in: Journal of Community Health | Issue 2/2018

Login to get access

Abstract

Physically demanding work carried out during long workdays affects women’s health. In rural and agrarian societies, women perform a variety of domestic and productive tasks, often from dawn to dusk, with little or no leisure time. This paper presents the results of a survey of indigenous women in six rural communities in the Ecuadorian highlands. It was conducted to measure the amount of time women spend on physically demanding work in the context of food security, parity outcomes, and access to prenatal health care. The findings demonstrate that these women work very long workdays and also experience food insecurity and poor access to prenatal health care.
Literature
1.
Peacock, A. J. (1998). Oxygen at high altitude. BMJ (Clinical Research ed.), 317, 1063–1066.CrossRef
2.
Boserup, E. (1970). Women’s role in economic development. London: George Allen & Unwin.
3.
Browner, C. H. (1989). Women, household and health in Latin America. Social Science and Medicine, 28, 461–473.CrossRefPubMed
4.
Deere, C. D., & León de Leal, M. (1981). Peasant production, proletarianization, and the sexual division of labor in the Andes. Signs, 7, 338–360.CrossRef
5.
Sargent, C. F. & Brettell, C. B. (1996). Gender and health: An international perspective. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
6.
Artacoz, L., Cortès, I., Borrell, C., Escribà-Agüir, V., & Cascant, L. (2007). Gender perspective in the analysis of the relationship between long work hours, Health, and Health-related behavior. Scandinavian Journal of Work and Environmental Health, 33, 344–350.CrossRef
7.
Artacoz, L., Cortès, I., Benavides, F. G., Escribà-Agüir, V., Bartoll, X., Vargas, H., & Borrell, C. (2016). Long working hours and health in Europe: Gender and welfare state differences in a context of economic crisis. Health and Place, 40, 161–168.CrossRef
8.
Bonde, J. P., Jørgensen, K. T., Bonzini, M., & Palmer, K. T. (2013). Miscarriage and occupational activity: A systematic review and meta-analysis regarding shift work, working hours, lifting, standing, and physical workload. Scandinavian Journal of Work and Environmental Health, 39, 325–334.CrossRef
9.
Giuffrida, A., Iunes, R. F., & Savedoff, W. D. (2002). Occupational risks in Latin America and the Caribbean: Economic and health dimensions. Health Policy and Planning, 17, 235–246.CrossRefPubMed
10.
Singh, S., Sedgh, G., & Hussain, R. (2010). Unintended pregnancy: Worldwide levels, trends, and outcomes. Studies in Family Planning, 41, 241–250.CrossRefPubMed
11.
FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). (2011). The state of food and agriculture: Women in agriculture: Closing the gender gap for development. Rome: FAO.
12.
FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). (2009). Gender in agriculture sourcebook. Rome: FAO.
13.
Harriss, J. (2014). Gender implications of poor nutrition and health in agricultural households. In A. A. Quisumbing, R. Meinzen-Dick, T. L. Raney, A. Croppenstedt, J. A. Behrman & A. Peterman (Eds.), Gender in agriculture: Closing the knowledge gap (pp. 267–283). Rome: FAO/Springer.CrossRef
14.
Marmot, M., & Bell, R. (2016). Social inequalities in health: A proper concern of epidemiology. Epidemiology, 26, 238–240.
15.
Freire, W. B., Ramirez-Luzuriaga, M. J., Belmont, P., et al. (2014). Tomo I: Encuesta nacional de salud y nutrición de la población ecuatoriana de cero a 59 años. ENSANUT-ECU 2012. Quito: Ministerio de Salud Pública/Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos.
16.
Freire, W. B., Silva-Jaramillo, K. M., Ramirez-Luzuriaga, M. J., Belmont, P., & Waters, W. F. (2014). The double burden of undernutrition and excess body weight in Ecuador. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 100(Suppl), 1636S–1643S.CrossRefPubMed
17.
Hall, G., & Patrinos, H. A. (Eds.). (2006). Indigenous peoples, poverty, and human development in Latin America 1994–2004. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank.
18.
King, M., Smith, A., & Grace, M. (2009). Indigenous health part 2: The underlying causes of the health gap. Lancet, 374, 76–85.CrossRefPubMed
19.
UNDP (United Nations Development Program). (2015). Human development report 2015: Work for human development. New York: UNDP.CrossRef
20.
21.
Larrea, C., & Montenegro, F. (2006). Ecuador. In G. Hall & H. A. Patrinos (Eds.), Indigenous peoples, poverty, and human development in Latin America 1994–2004 (pp. 67–105). Washington, D.C.: The World Bank.CrossRef
22.
Montenegro, R. A. & Stephens, C. (2006). Indigenous health in Latin America and the Caribbean. Lancet, 367, 1859–1869.CrossRefPubMed
23.
Weismantel, M. J. (1988). Food, gender, and poverty in the Ecuadorian Andes. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
24.
World Bank. (2007). Nutritional failure in Ecuador: Causes, consequences, and solutions. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank.CrossRef
25.
Ministerio de Coordinación de Desarrollo Social & World Food Program. (2010). Mapa de la desnutrición crónica en el Ecuador. Ministerio de Coordinación de Desarrollo Social, Quito: World Food Program.
26.
Camacho, A. V., Castro, M. D., & Kaufman, R. (2006). Cultural aspects related to the health of Andean women in Latin America: A key issue for progress toward the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals. International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 94, 357–363.CrossRef
27.
Alonso-Fradejas, A., Borras, S. M., Holmes, T., Holt-Giménez, E., & Robbins, M. J. (2015). Food sovereignty: Convergence and contradictions, conditions and challenges. Third World Quarterly, 36, 431–448.CrossRef
28.
Giunta, I. (2014). Food sovereignty in Ecuador: Peasant struggles and the challenge to institutionalization. Journal of Peasant Studies, 41, 1201–1214.CrossRef
29.
Black, R. E., Allen, L. H., Bhutta, Z. A., Caulfield, L. E., et al. (2008). Maternal and child undernutrition: Global and regional exposures and health consequences. Lancet, 371, 243–260.CrossRefPubMed
30.
Mitra, A. K., & Rodriguez-Fernandez, G. (2010). Latin America and the Caribbean: Assessment of the advances in public health for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 7, 2238–2255.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
31.
Waters, W. F. (2007). Indigenous communities, landlords, and the state: Land and labor in highland Ecuador, 1950–1975. In A. K. Clark & M. Becker. (Eds.), Highland indians and the state in modern Ecuador (pp. 120–136). Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.CrossRef
32.
Madsen, M., Jørgensen, T., Jensen, et al. (2007). Leisure time physical exercise during pregnancy and the risk of miscarriage: A study within the Danish National Birth Cohort. BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, 11, 1419–1426.CrossRef
33.
Gallegos, C. A., Waters, W. F., & Sebert Kuhlmann, A. (2017). Discourse vs. practice: Are traditional practices and beliefs in pregnancy and childbirth included or excluded in the Ecuadorian health care system? International Health, 9, 105–111.PubMed
34.
Moore, L. G. (2003). Fetal growth restriction and maternal oxygen transport during high altitude pregnancy. High Altitude Medicine and Biology, 4, 141–156.CrossRefPubMed
35.
Moore, L. G., Charles, M., & Julian, C. G. (2011). Humans at high altitude: Hypoxia and fetal growth. Respiratory Physiology and Neurobiology, 178, 181–190.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
36.
Moore, L. G., Shriver, M., Bemis, L., Hickler, B., et al. (2004). Maternal adaptation to high-altitude pregnancy: An experiment of nature: A review. Placenta, 25, S60–S71.CrossRefPubMed
37.
Julh, M., Strandberg-Larsen, K., Larsen, P. S., et al. (2013). Occupational lifting during pregnancy and risk of fetal death in a large national cohort study. Scandanavian Journal of Work and Environmental Health, 39, 335–342.CrossRef
38.
39.
WHO (World Health Organization). (2016). Recommendations on antenatal care for positive pregnancy experience. Geneva: World Health Organization. Retrieved June 20, 2017 from http://​who.​int/​iris/​bitstream/​10665/​250796/​1/​9789241549912-eng.​pdf.​
40.
Ferreira, C., Garcia, K., Macías, L., Pérez, A., & Tomisch, C. (nd). Mujeres y hombres del Ecuador en cifras III. Quito: Instituto de Estadistica y Censos & ONUMujeres.
41.
Melby, C. L., Orozco, F., Ochoa, D., Muquinche, M., Padro, M., & Muñoz, F. N. (2017). Nutrition and physical activity in the Ecuadorian Andes: Differences among urban and rural-dwelling women. American Journal of Human Biology. doi:10.​1002/​ajhb.​22986.PubMedCrossRef
42.
Deere, C. D. (2009). The feminization of agriculture? The impact of economic restructuring in rural Latin America. In S. Razavi (Ed.), The gendered impacts of liberalization: Towards “embedded liberalism”? (pp. 99–130). London: Routledge.
43.
Momsen, J. H. (2005). Women and development in the third world. New York: Routledge.
44.
Weigel, M., Armijos, R. X., Racines, M., & Cevallos, W. (2016). Food insecurity is associated with undernutrition but not overnutrition in Ecuadorian women from low-income urban neighborhoods. Journal of Environmental Public Health. 10.​1155/​2016/​8149459.CrossRefPubMed
45.
UNICEF. (2006). The state of the world’s children 2007: Women and children, The double dividend of gender equality. New York: UNICEF.
46.
Ministerio de Salud Pública. (2012). Manual del modelo de atención integral de salud—MAIS. Quito: Ministerio de Salud Pública.
Metadata
Title
Physically Demanding Labor and Health Among Indigenous Women in the Ecuadorian Highlands
Authors
William F. Waters
Jessica Ehlers
Fernando Ortega
Anne Sebert Kuhlmann
Publication date
01-04-2018
Publisher
Springer US
Published in
Journal of Community Health / Issue 2/2018
Print ISSN: 0094-5145
Electronic ISSN: 1573-3610
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10900-017-0407-7

Other articles of this Issue 2/2018

Journal of Community Health 2/2018 Go to the issue

Original Paper

A Descriptive Study of Work Ability and Health Problems Among Brazilian Recyclable Waste Pickers

Original Paper

Use of Traditional Healing Practices in Two Ontario First Nations

Original Paper

A Community-Based “Street Team” Tobacco Cessation Intervention by and for Youth and Young Adults

Original Paper

Is There a Return on a Children’s Hospital’s Investment in a Pediatric Residency’s Community Health Track? A Cost Analysis

Original Paper

HIV Viral Suppression, 37 States and the District of Columbia, 2014

Original Paper

Building Community Partnerships: Using Social Network Analysis to Strengthen Service Networks Supporting a South Carolina Program for Pregnant and Parenting Teens