This book integrates the role of gender in girls' and women's development across the life span, looking specifically at internal and external vulnerabilities and risks, and the protective or supportive factors that facilitate effective coping, positive growth, strength and resilience. The interaction between physical, psychological, and cultural factors is integrated within each period of development. The book emphasizes how gender socialization of female development and behavior impacts self-evaluation and identity processes within various cultural groups. The authors also discusses the social roles that girls and women reflectively adopt and describe how externally induced risks such as poverty, interpersonal abuse, and violence influence a healthy development.
The book seeks to analyse the various forms of violence against women, to look into the socio-cultural and structural causes of such violence, the impact on women's as well as societal health, and the legal interventions which have been made and which can be made. The authors have focused on different aspects of violence including domestic violence, female foeticide and infanticide, socio-cultural causes of violence, impact of globalisation and new technological developments, impact on women's health as well as the legal and judicial interventions.