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~~flh-We~t reglons Of the country was also responsible for the low economlc status
,nached to females in these areas. Reciprocity and bride wealth which were common
in the South enhanced the value of women in these areas (Bardhan,l988) The extent
and quality of gender dlscnmination are known to vary from place to place even wthln a
small geograph~cal area. Therefore, one has to be cautious ~n generailzing such
lnformat~on (Sen and Sengupta. 1983).
7 3 Methodology
As mentioned earller (Chapter 1 Introduction) soclal context for the purpose of this
study considered school age chtldren ~n thew home mllleu The Issues that were
considered were gender preferecce ~n hawng chlldren by the community nutrltlon and
health care gtven to them Importance glven to the~r educat~on acttv~ty pattern of
children ~n thetr dally llfe menarche and ~ts lmpllcatlon on the glrl chlld and the
cornnlurllty s attltude towards the mamage of a chid These Issues were addressed to
bring out the drfferences ~n the soctal status between glrls and boys
The actlvtty
pattern tn thls study referred to analysls of actiwtles that reflected the soclal status of
chlldren In thew home context Data on the above Issues were collected by both
ethnographlc and otner ep~dem~ologlcal methods The methods relevant to vanous
Issues and the Issues addressed by dlfferenl methods are glven ~n Tables 7 ?A-7 1C
7.3.1 Description of methods
la) Ethnoqraphic methods
The detatls of ethnographlc methods have already been descnbed In the chapter on
tlealth (Chapter 5 3) 1 l ~e method applled here was malnly ln-depth lnte~tew~, slnce it