A new survey has named India among the top five countries in the world that are considered as 'most dangerous places' for women.
A new survey has named India among the top five countries in the world that are considered as 'most dangerous places' for women.
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The survey, produced by the recently launched TrustLaw website-a product of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, has revealed that Afghanistan, Congo, Pakistan, India and Somalia are the five top countries where record of women's progress in different fields is extremely poor.
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Afghanistan has topped the list, while India has been placed in the fourth position, CBS News reports.
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Although India is a rapidly developing country, it still places great cultural burdens on women, the report said.
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Besides the incredibly high rates of human trafficking and prostitution involving women, female foeticide and infanticide is incredibly high there. Around 50 million females have reportedly gone missing because of the practice in the last century, it added.
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As far as Afghanistan is concerned, one in 11 women there have a chance of dying in childbirth, around 87 percent of women are illiterate, and as many as 80 percent of girls face forced marriages, the report said.
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Congo was included in the list because of the record level of sexual violence in the country, with reports saying that as many as 400,000 women are raped there annually.
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As many as 1,000 women are killed annually in Pakistan in the name of "honour killing," while the rising number of rape cases, lack of healthcare facilities for pregnant women, and such other factors have put Somalia as the fifth worst place for women in the world.
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The results of one experiment revealed that volunteers who had been craving a food reported reduced food cravings after they formed images of common sights (for example, they were asked to imagine the appearance of a rainbow) or smells (they were asked to imagine the smell of eucalyptus).
In another experiment, volunteers who were craving a food watched a flickering pattern of black and white dots on a monitor (similar to an untuned television set).
After viewing the pattern, they reported a decrease in the vividness of their craved-food images as well as a reduction in their cravings.
According to the researchers, these findings indicate that "engaging in a simple visual task seems to hold real promise as a method for curbing food cravings."
The authors suggest that "real-world implementations could incorporate the dynamic visual noise display into existing accessible technologies, such as the smart phone and other mobile, hand-held computing devices."
They conclude that these experimental approaches may extend beyond food cravings and have implications for reducing cravings of other substances such as drugs and alcohol.
The study has been published in the current issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.