Women, girls, and climate change: Human rights, vulnerabilities, and opportunities.

Our world faces potentially catastrophic climate change that can damage human health in multiple ways. The impact of climate change is uneven, disproportionately affecting the lives and livelihoods of women and girls. This conceptual article compiles evidence for a model that argues that climate change has more detrimental consequences for women than men because of women's precarity (unequal power) and corporal (physical) vulnerability. Climate change challenges the human rights of women and girls, triggering displacement, interrupted education, food and water scarcity, economic instability, mental and physical health challenges, reproductive injustice, gender-based violence, exploitation and human trafficking. Women are effective and essential change agents; their empowerment can directly contravene or mitigate climate change and also break the links between climate change and its negative consequences for women and girls. Gender-sensitive responses to the effects of climate change are imperative. Women's empowerment will further human rights and achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

"There Is Nothing I Cannot Achieve": Empowering Latin American Women Through Agricultural Education.

Higher education, a key driver of women's empowerment, is still segregated by gender across the world. Agricultural higher education is a field that is male-dominated, even though internationally women play a large role in agricultural production. The purpose of this study was to understand the experience, including challenges and coping strategies, of women from 10 Latin American countries attending an agricultural university in Latin America. The participants were 28 women students with a mean age of 20.9 ± 1.8 years. Following informed consent and assurance of confidentiality, four focus group sessions (one for each year of study with a mean duration of 81 min) were conducted in Spanish. The central question was, "what has been your experience at the university?" Sessions were recorded and transcribed. Thematic coding was performed independently by two teams of researchers (from Latin America and North America), with the resulting schemas combined through mutual discussion. Member checking, auditing, and reflexivity contributed to trustworthiness of the process. Students reported that the personal qualities needed for success included determination, persistence, and self-efficacy. Many described an empowerment process, including increased discipline and self-efficacy from the first to fourth year of study. University life encompassed six themes: university structure and discipline (part of the exosystem), two supportive microsystems (friends and classmates and institutional support) as well as three challenges (academics, peers, and machismo). Cultural influences instantiated in students' daily experiences included familism, machismo, and religious faith. Students anticipated futures involving further education and contributions to society. We conclude that higher education in agriculture can serve as an effective means of empowering women to feed the world.

Guatemalan women achieve ideal family size: Empowerment through education and decision-making.

Women's empowerment in family planning strengthens families and communities. Using 2014/2015 Demographic and Health Surveys data from 7,168 Guatemalan women, ages 35 and above with at least one living child, we examined indicators of empowerment in four domains - economic, educational, social, and contraceptive - and their relation to the number of living children compared to the ideal number of children. We reveal our analysis showing that economic, educational, and social empowerment predicted achieving the preferred number of children. Education and control over their own income are two critical empowerment factors for Guatemalan women.

Using adolescents' drawings to reveal stereotypes about ethnic groups in Guatemala.

It is important to identify stereotypes about indigenous people because those stereotypes influence prejudice and discrimination, both obstacles to social justice and universal human rights. The purpose of the current study was to document the stereotypes, as held by Guatemalan adolescents, of indigenous Maya people (e.g., Maya) and nonindigenous Ladinos in Guatemala (the 2 main ethnic groups in Guatemala). Guatemalan adolescents (N = 465; 38.3% female; Mage = 14.51 years; SDage = 1.81 years) provided drawings and written characteristics about indigenous Maya and nonindigenous Ladino people, which were then coded for patterns in the data. These patterns included negative stereotypes, such as the Maya being lazy and Ladina women being weak; and positive stereotypes, such as the Maya being caring and warm and Ladino men being successful. There were also interactions between the participants' own gender and ethnicity and how they depicted the target they were assigned. For example, male participants were unlikely to depict male targets of either ethnicity engaging in homemaking activities. Finally, there was evidence of in-group bias based both on gender and ethnicity. These findings suggest that perhaps because indigenous groups around the world share some common negative stereotypes, an understanding of these stereotypes will aid in decreasing prejudice and discrimination against indigenous people, could reduce intergroup conflict, and increase access to basic human rights. (PsycINFO Database Record

Ethnic and adoption attitudes among Guatemalan University students.

Intercountry adoptions from Guatemala were highly controversial, because of the large numbers of children being adopted to the USA, along with evidence of corruption and child theft. Since the implementation of the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption in 2008, Guatemala's central authority for adoption has prioritized domestic placements for children over intercountry adoption. A possible attitudinal barrier to domestic adoption in Guatemala-negative attitudes and prejudice against Indigenous people-was investigated through questionnaires measuring attitudes toward adoption and attitudes toward and social distance from the two major ethnic groups (Ladino and Indigenous). Guatemalan university students (N = 177, 61 % men) were recruited from basic required courses at a private university. Results showed that attitudes toward adoption in general were more favorable than toward interethnic adoption, with the most negative attitudes toward adoption of Ladino children by Indigenous parents. Multiple regression and analysis of covariance models revealed that female gender, experience with adoption and more positive attitudes about Indigenous persons were associated with more positive attitudes toward adoption. The findings imply that negative attitudes toward Indigenous persons are associated with negative attitudes toward adoption, and serve as barriers to promoting domestic adoption in Guatemala.

Acculturation Clusters and Life Satisfaction / Grupos de aculturación y satisfacción vital

The purpose of our study was to determine if acculturation variables from different acculturation domains form empirically extracted acculturation clusters [based on Berry's (1997) model], and if the clusters are related to the life satisfaction of first and second generation immigrant college students. One hundred twenty-two students attending a university in the Midwestern USA (70% female), representing more than 20 countries of origin, completed an online questionnaire. Hierarchical cluster analysis using Ward's method and a k-means analysis revealed four acculturation clusters that were labeled (1) Bicultural Attitudes, (2) Bicultural Practices & Heritage Identity, (3) U.S. Practices, and (4) Heritage Practices. Participants in the two clusters most closely resembling Berry's (1997) acculturation category of integration (i.e., Bicultural Attitudes, and Bicultural Practices & Heritage Identity) reported significantly higher life satisfaction than participants in the cluster most closely resembling Berry's (1997) acculturation category of separation (i.e., Heritage Practices). The findings of the present study lend additional support to the use of clustering methods as a way of including multiple domains of acculturation, thereby gaining a more comprehensive understanding of acculturation and its connection with psychosocial adjustment. The results also reinforce prior research findings that integration, or biculturalism, is an adaptive acculturation strategy.

El objetivo de nuestro estudio fue determinar si distintas combinaciones de variables de aculturación provenientes de diferentes dominios de aculturación conforman grupos obtenidos empíricamente [con base en el modelo de Berry (1997)], y si estos grupos están relacionados con diferentes niveles de satisfacción vital en estudiantes universitarios que pertenecen a la primera y segunda generación de imigrantes. Ciento veintidós estudiantes que asisten a una universidad en el Medio Oeste de los Estados Unidos (70% mujeres), provenientes de más de 20 países de origen distintos, completaron un cuestionario a través del Internet. Los análisis de conglomerados jerárquicos con el método de Ward y un análisis de K-means revelaron cuatro grupos de aculturación que fueron nombrados: (1) las actitudes biculturales, (2) las prácticas biculturales y la identidad étnica, (3) las prácticas estadounidenses, y (4) las prácticas étnicas. Los participantes de los dos grupos que más se asemejan a la categoría de aculturación de integración de Berry (1997) (las actitudes biculturales; las prácticas biculturales y la identidad étnica) reportaron una mayor satisfacción vital que los participantes en el grupo que más se asemeja a la categoría de separación de Berry (las prácticas étnicas). Los resultados de este estudio proveen un argumento adicional en favor del uso de métodos de agrupación como una manera de incluir dominios de aculturación múltiples, para obtener con ello una comprensión más amplia de la aculturación y su conexión con la adaptación psicosocial. Los resultados también refuerzan que la biculturalidad es una estrategia adaptativa.

The sociocultural model of eating disorder development: application to a Guatemalan sample.

Exposure to Western ideals of appearance along with rapid societal change appears to be salient risk factors for eating disorder development. According to the sociocultural model, internalization of the thin ideal leads to body dissatisfaction and subsequent negative affect and dieting behaviors which increase the risk for eating disorder development. An expanded version of the sociocultural model was examined among an economically stratified sample of 347 girls in grades 5 and 6 from Guatemala City. Questionnaires used to measure disturbed eating attitudes and behaviors, body dissatisfaction, social sensitivity, and internalization of the thin ideal were administered and BMI was calculated following measurement of height and weight. Path analyses showed that the expanded sociocultural model was an excellent fit to the data. Both elevated adiposity and social sensitivity led to increased body dissatisfaction and thin ideal internalization. Thin ideal internalization led to body dissatisfaction and to disturbed eating attitudes and behaviors. Results suggest that developing countries are not immune to the influence of sociocultural risk factors for eating disorders.