Paper short abstract:

Indian women are dominated by men since ages. Their health despite of receiving much attention from researchers, policy makers etc have not shown remarkable improvement. The urban areas have better health facilities and access still there is higher prevalence of diseases as compared to rural areas. There is a need to understand the rural-urban differentials in the prevalence of lifestyle disease among women.

Paper long abstract:

The study has used data from third wave of National Family Health Survey (2005-06) to assess differentials in prevalence of selected lifestyle disease among rural and urban women. The non communicable diseases taken for the study are the prevalence of diabetes, asthma and goiter among rural and urban women. The sample is sufficient to carry out multivariate analysis. Analysis reflects that the prevalence of diabetes and goiter is more than double among urban women as compared to rural women; however with regard to asthma, the prevalence is higher for rural women though there is not much difference. This brings into light that though urban women are more prone to lifestyle diseases, rural women are also not left untouched by such lifestyle diseases. The higher prevalence of asthma among rural women points to the socioeconomic and environmental factors such as more use of chullas than cooking gas for cooking food etc. The study has clearly reflected that the prevalence of lifestyle diseases is much higher among urban women still the prevalence is not less for rural women. There is a need to improve the living conditions and lifestyle of women residing in urban as well as rural areas in order to improve the health status and conditions of women.