Rashidy Kazeuka says a forest cleared for charcoal is a silent and desolate place. No birds or other wildlife, just a barren, dried out landscape.

By comparing “first wave” developing countries, like Sweden and the United States, to “second wave” developers, like South Korea and Japan, Thomas Anderson and Hans-Peter Kohler of the University of Pennsylvania seek to explain why countries that underwent socioeconomic development in the first half of the 20th century have slightly higher fertility levels than those that developed later. Despite “both sets of countries attaining high income and generally low fertility, contemporary gender norms and levels of gender equity differ between them,” write Anderson and Kohler in a new study in Population and Development Review.

A recent article by Malcolm Potts, Aafreen Mahmood, and Alisha Graves of the University of California Berkeley’s OASIS Initiative notes that family planning has an important role to play in building peace by increasing women’s empowerment and their agency. “The pill is mightier than the sword,” as they put it.

Barren barley and wheat fields stretch across the dry landscape of northern Afghanistan, the result of persistent drought and flash flooding that has left thousands of people facing food shortages and loss of work.

Maternal mortality causes 56,000 deaths every year in India, accounting for 20 percent of maternal deaths around the world. Women who are born into the lower castes or are tribals – India’s indigenous groups – are especially likely to lack access to quality health care. Over 40 percent of these women also belong to the lowest wealth quintile.

Obstetric fistula is a devastating childbirth injury caused by prolonged obstructed labor. It can lead to incontinence and infection, social stigmatization as others recoil in horror, and even mental illness. Between 50,000 to 100,000 women each year are affected by it – and it’s entirely preventable with proper medical attention.

The feats that pregnant women perform under some of the most rudimentary conditions are sometimes unimaginable.

There’s perhaps no better evidence of China’s growing appetite for American agricultural products than the ongoing transformation of the port of Oakland.