State of Women Health in Assam: A Geographical Analysis

Empowering women is an effective strategy for socioeconomic and political development of the modern society, in which, women's health is one of the basic components. Better health care facilities provided to women have been considered as an important way to empower women in several ways. The present study focuses on the issues to understand the state of the women's health in Assam. The women in the State belong to various socioeconomic backgrounds. Rural Assam is heterogeneous, where; problems vary depending on the variation in ecological setup. Women from rural areas, by and large experience poorer health and have less access to health care facilities than that of the urban women. Recently, the Government of Assam has decided to implement the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG's), as adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, which will provide greater impact on the health, happiness, prosperity and well being of each and every citizen of Assam. Obviously, the goals cover many of the issues of women health and overall empowerment in the State. Keeping this and related issues of women welfare in mind, a gender atlas of Assam are being prepared within the framework of an ICSSR sponsored research project. Using some preliminary works of the project outcome, the women's health issues has been addressed in the study using a set of maps prepared primarily based on secondary data and critical analysis has been done to highlight the state of women's health in the State.