This study examines women's attitude towards intimate partner violence among 331 Bangladeshi women in five selected disadvantaged areas of Dhaka city. This study used a shorter version of the Inventory of Beliefs about Wife Beating (IBWB) to measure women's attitude towards intimate partner violence. The results revealed that the mean score on the wife-beating scale of 15 items was 7.81 (SD = 4.893). Significant amounts of the variance (42.9%) in women's attitude towards intimate partner violence can be attributed to respondent's education (B = -0.60, p < 0.001), husband's education (B = -1.251, p < 0.01), exposure to mass media (B = -1.251, p < 0.01), respondent's current age (B = 0.081, p < 0.05), age at marriage (B = 0.215, p < 0.01), intimate partner violence victimization within the last 12 months (B = -1.533, p < 0.001) and women receiving micro-credit (small-scale loan or financial assistance) (B = -2.214, p < 0.001). The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings.

BackgroundTeenage pregnancy is a public health concern both in developed and developing world. In Bangladesh, most of the first pregnancies occur immediately after marriage, especially among teenagers. Although women aged 15-29 years are the most fertility contributing women in Bangladesh, studies are not yet conducted on teenage pregnancy within this group of women. In the current study, an attempt had been made to identify the factors affecting teenage marital pregnancy in women aged 15-29 years.MethodsA cross sectional survey was carried out in 389 women, selected with a convenience sampling technique. Participants were selected on the basis of two criteria, such as married women and age within 15-29 years. We excluded women aged more than 29 years as we attempted to conduct study within high fertility contributing women and with the assumption that they may provide data subjected to relatively high level of recall bias as marital pregnancy may be a longer past event to them. In the analysis, we applied bi-variate and multi-variate logistic regression technique to find out odds ratio of teenage marital pregnancy.ResultsResult revealed that 72.5% of the participants experienced first marital pregnancy during their teenage, with a mean age of 17.88 years (SD = 2.813). Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that participants aged 20-24 years had higher likelihood (OR 1.971, 95% CI 1.132 to 3.434), whereas participants aged 25-29 years had lower likelihood (OR 0.054, 95% CI 0.016 to 0.190) of experiencing teenage marital pregnancy compared to participants aged 15-19 years. In addition, participants desired for >2 children had significant higher odds (OR 3.573, 95% CI 1.910 to 6.684) and participants born in urban area had significant lower odds (OR 0.458, 95% CI 0.228 to 0.919) for teenage marital pregnancy.ConclusionsBased on the findings, we conclude that in order to reduce teenage marital pregnancy, consideration should be given on women's desired number of children and birth place so that women's desired number of children is limited to within two children, and that rural women get increased working and other related opportunities that may contribute in delaying teenage pregnancy.

The study assessed the achievements in, critically reviewed the relevant issues of, and put forward recommendations for achieving the target of the Millennium Development Goal relating to mortality of children aged less than five years (under-five mortality) in Bangladesh within 2015. To materialize the study objectives, a thorough literature review was done. Mortality of under-five children and infants decreased respectively to 65 from 151 and to 52 from 94 per 1,000 livebirths during 1990-2006. The immunization coverage increased from 54% to 81.9% during the same period. The projection shows that Bangladesh will achieve targeted reduction in under-five mortality and infant mortality within the time limit, except immunization coverage. Neonatal mortality contributed to the majority of childhood deaths. Contribution of neonatal mortality to child mortality was the highest. There were remarkable differences in child mortality by sex, division, and residence. To progress further for achieving the target of MDG relating to child mortality, some issues, such as lower use of maternal healthcare services, hazardous environmental effects on childhood illness, high malnutrition among children, shorter duration of exclusive breastfeeding practices, various child injuries leading to death, low healthcare-use of children, probable future threat of financial shortage, and strategies lacking area-wise focus on child mortality, need to be considered. Without these, the achievement of MDG relating to child mortality may not be possible within 2015.

This article examines women's attitudes towards informal, formal social and formal legal supportseeking strategies against intimate partner violence (IPV). This study found that the majority of the participants were likely to seek help from informal, formal social and formal legal agents. Multivariate analyses revealed that women's attitudes significantly varied by women's age, women's working status, experience of violence, receipt of micro-credit, women's decisionmaking authority, husband's age, husband's education, family economic status and family type. We suggest that increased employment opportunities and increased number of micro-credit recipients may change women's attitudes from avoidance coping strategies to help-seeking coping strategies.

The age at first birth is very low under existing rural sociocultural settings in Bangladesh. This study examined the socioeconomic and cultural determinants of age at first birth. The study subjects were married women aged 15 to 29 years in 2 rural areas that were identified through a multistage sampling technique. To collect the relevant information, a semistructured interviewer schedule was applied to the eligible women. This study found that 72.8% women gave first birth at <20 years of age with mean age at first birth 18.74 years. Simple linear regression model explained 30.9% of variance in age at first live birth. Among socioeconomic and cultural determinants, family pressure explained the most significant variance. It is really difficult to reduce fertility in complex sociocultural settings in rural Bangladesh. However, the findings of this study may provide an answer to increase the age at first birth and hence to reduce the high fertility among these group of women.