PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] – Multiple PSTC affiliates and alum have contributed to the newly published International Handbook on Gender and Demographic Processes, which "presents a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of gender in demography." The volume is co-edited by PSTC Alum Jan Brunson (Anthropology PhD ’08), now an associate professor of Anthropology at the University of Hawaii.

Professor of Anthropology Daniel Smith wrote, "Gender and HIV: Evidence from Anthropological Demography in Nigeria," which examines “how unmarried young women in Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria, navigate the complicated landscape of migration, work, sex, and social relationships in the era of AIDS, as their strategies to survive and to improve their lives are often judged through moral lenses shaped by the epidemic.”

PSTC Trainee Ieva Zumbyte and Director Susan Short, along with former Faculty Associate Nancy Luke, now an associate professor of Sociology and Demography at Penn State University, co-authored the chapter, “Women’s Happiness in Contemporary China: The Relevance of Unpaid Work,” which asks why most analyses of happiness, a widely used as a marker of the overall health and well-being of a population, “highlight the importance of economic factors such as paid work, paying little attention to unpaid domestic work, an activity disproportionately done by women.”

PSTC Alum Bruce White, now an associate professor of Anthropology at Lehigh University, authored, "The Exaggerated Demise of Polygyny: Transformations in Marriage and Gender Relations in West Africa," which “considers polygyny’s ongoing reconfiguration amid sweeping changes in African marital norms and behaviors.”  

Brunson wrote the chapter, "Maternal Health in Nepal and Other Low-Income Countries: Causes, Contexts, and Future Directions," which analyzes “the current and future directions in studies of maternal health in low-income countries such as Nepal, identifying three formidable challenges to achieving further declines in maternal mortality ratios in the future.”

The volume is part of Springer’s International Handbooks of Population book series, for which Professor of Sociology Michael White is editor of the International Handbook of Migration and Population Distribution (2016).