ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how women’s abilities to secure their livelihoods affect key capabilities of bodily health and bodily integrity. It explores the ways in which these capabilities, specifically related to reproductive health, shape women’s economic outcomes or levels of provisioning. The chapter highlights key deficits in women’s agency regarding their own health and bodies, and the ways in which these have harmed women’s well-being and contributed to enduring gender inequalities. The ability to limit and space one’s fertility is central to reproductive health and is strongly impacted by a woman’s economic empowerment. In addition to a decline in fertility and an improvement in related health outcomes, women in treatment households experienced an increase in economic productivity outside the household and increased household assets. Access to maternity care depends heavily on economic resources, with 99 percent of maternal deaths occurring in the Global South. While breastfeeding is the dominant norm in the Global South, several factors can inhibit optimal breastfeeding behavior.
