Abstract

Background: It is the right of every child to know and be cared for by his/her parents. The responsibilities for the child’s well-being rely on both the parents and the society. Since the ancient times, it is the gender that determines the position of a child in the Indian society. Of late, owing to socioeconomic factors, the incidences of neglect, abuse, and deprivation, particularly, with the girl child, have gradually increased. Denial of equality, rights, opportunity, and supplement in any form on the basis of gender is gender discrimination. Gender discrimination is owing to the attitude and behavior of the society toward the girl child. The girl child faces the neglect of the family in the form of a failure to provide her the basic necessities of life in terms of food, clothing, love, shelter, supervision, education, and medical care.
Objective: To assess the magnitude of gender disparity in nutritional status and health-seeking behavior among parents in children aged under-5 years.
Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in Shivanagi, the rural field practice area of BLDE University’s Shri BM Patil Medical College, Bijapur, Karnataka, India, from November 2013 to December 2013. A total of 161 under-five children from the five anganwadi centers in the Shivanagi region were selected. The majority of the children were within the range of normal as per WHO 2006 growth charts. Result: Male children were more malnourished than female children. Although the frequency of falling ill is the same between both the genders, the treatment was given more importance to male than female children. Conclusion: The overall prevalence of disease was low in our study area. The majority of the children suffered with fever, diarrhea, and acute respiratory infection. Significant differentiation was observed between the male and female children with regard to the time lag between child falling ill and initiation of treatment and the amount spent for treatment. Male children were more malnourished than female children. This is contrary to the general belief that female children are more malnourished.