scholarly journals Gender equality and health equity: strategic lessons from country experiences of gender mainstreaming in health

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Cristina González Vélez ◽  
Anna Coates ◽  
Victoria Diaz Garcia ◽  
Denisse Wolfenzon
Keyword(s):  
Health Equity ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Grey Literature ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
Gender Mainstreaming ◽  
Gender Inequalities ◽  
Structural Barriers ◽  
Enabling Factors ◽  
And Gender

Objectives. To analyze progress in organizational structures, mechanisms, strategies, and enabling factors and barriers towards gender mainstreaming (GM) in health in Guatemala, Guyana, and Peru, given GM’s role in addressing gender inequalities in health as a key structural driver of health equity. Methods. Data was obtained through a grey literature review of laws, policies, and/or program documents and semi-structured qualitative interviews with 37 informants. Analysis was based on a theoretical framework including 7 categories considered essential to advance GM in the health sector. Results. Despite significant efforts and accumulated experiences of GM in health, structural barriers include: wider societal challenges of transforming gender unequal power relations; health system complexity combined with the low technical, political, and financial capacity of institutional structures tasked with GM; and limited coordination with (often weak) National Women’s Machineries (NWMs). In some contexts, barriers are compounded by limited understanding of basic concepts underlying GM (at times exacerbated by misunderstandings related to intersectionality and/or engagement with men) and the absence of indicators to measure GM’s concrete results and impact. Conclusions. Successful GM requires a more strategic and transformational agenda, developed and implemented in coordination with NWMs and civil society and with reference to external bodies (e.g. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women) to go beyond process, with clearer distinction between gender sensitivity and gender transformation, and definition of expected results and indicators to measure advances. These then could be better documented and systematized, enabling GM to be more broadly understood and operationalized as a concrete instrument towards health equity.

scholarly journals Cancer Disparities and Health Equity: A Policy Statement From the American Society of Clinical Oncology

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (29) ◽  
pp. 3439-3448 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manali I. Patel ◽  
Ana Maria Lopez ◽  
William Blackstock ◽  
Katherine Reeder-Hayes ◽  
E. Allyn Moushey ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Health Equity ◽  
Cancer Care ◽  
Care Delivery ◽  
Sociodemographic Factors ◽  
Cancer Disparities ◽  
Policy Statement ◽  
Structural Barriers ◽  
Cancer Outcomes ◽  
Research Education ◽  
And Gender

ASCO strives, through research, education, and promotion of the highest quality of patient care, to create a world where cancer is prevented and every survivor is healthy. In this pursuit, cancer health equity remains the guiding institutional principle that applies to all its activities across the cancer care continuum. In 2009, ASCO committed to addressing differences in cancer outcomes in its original policy statement on cancer disparities. Over the past decade, despite novel diagnostics and therapeutics, together with changes in the cancer care delivery system such as passage of the Affordable Care Act, cancer disparities persist. Our understanding of the populations experiencing disparate outcomes has likewise expanded to include the intersections of race/ethnicity, geography, sexual orientation and gender identity, sociodemographic factors, and others. This updated statement is intended to guide ASCO’s future activities and strategies to achieve its mission of conquering cancer for all populations. ASCO acknowledges that much work remains to be done, by all cancer stakeholders at the systems level, to overcome historical momentum and existing social structures responsible for disparate cancer outcomes. This updated statement affirms ASCO’s commitment to moving beyond descriptions of differences in cancer outcomes toward achievement of cancer health equity, with a focus on improving equitable access to care, improving clinical research, addressing structural barriers, and increasing awareness that results in measurable and timely action toward achieving cancer health equity for all.

scholarly journals How Can We Account for Persisting Educational Inequalities in Rural China

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (7) ◽  
pp. 46
Author(s):  
Jason Hung
Keyword(s):  
Central Government ◽  
Rural China ◽  
Gender Disparities ◽  
Educational Opportunities ◽  
Gender Inequalities ◽  
Structural Barriers ◽  
Education Development ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
Barriers To Education ◽  
And Gender

The ultimate purpose of the development of this essay is to inform Chinese policymakers on how they can better implement education-related policies to minimise spatial and gender disparities in, and multi-faceted barriers to, educational opportunities. This essay, firstly, highlights policies that address spatial and gender disparities in education and structural barriers to girls’ education with the support of the frameworks of Women in Development (WID) and Gender and Development (GAD) in rural Chinese contexts. Secondly, this essay outlines the problems of rural female underdevelopment in least educationally and financially developed Chinese regions based on critical analyses on relevant statistics and studies. Thirdly, in spite of the Central Government’s and non-governmental organisations’ (NGOs) endeavours to facilitating education development, this essay investigates and analyses how gender inequalities in education persist due to the unaddressed multi-faceted barriers to girls’ education. These multi-faceted barriers include social, cultural, economic and otherwise educational impediments faced by rural poor Chinese girls. Lastly, this essay suggests state and NGOs’ policy and intervention to address such structural barriers to education and enhance rural girls’ decision-making powers and educational opportunities in the long-term.

scholarly journals Lean Work and Gender Inequalities: Manufacturing Consent at a Multinational Car Plant in Provincial Russia

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Krzywdzinski ◽  
Grzegorz Lechowski ◽  
Valentina Mählmeyer
Keyword(s):  
Labour Market ◽  
Production Systems ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Gender Inequalities ◽  
Local Labour Market ◽  
Local Labour ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
And Gender ◽  
High Level

How do local labour market structures, in tandem with workforce dispositions and attitudes, influence the way multinational companies localise their standardised work and production systems? This article investigates the conflict-ridden factory regime of a lean automotive plant in provincial Russia at which the management was able to secure a relatively high level of consent among its female workers but not among male workers. In order to explain this gendered pattern of worker consent, the plant-internal gender division of labour and two societal factors proved crucial: the gendered segmentation of the local labour market and the workers’ cultural dispositions. At the same time, the analysis points to the transformative effect that the company’s work and production system had on the local labour regime. The case study relies on a combination of quantitative survey data and qualitative interviews. It emphasises the need to reconnect the analysis of branch-plant factory regimes to a nuanced understanding of their embeddedness within local labour markets – also in the case of highly standardised work and production systems.  KEY WORDS: labour control regime; labour process; labour market; lean production; gender relations

scholarly journals Mainstreaming as rhetoric or reality? Gender and global health at the World Bank

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janelle Winters ◽  
Genevie Fernandes ◽  
Lauren McGivern ◽  
Devi Sridhar
Keyword(s):  
Global Health ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Grey Literature ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
Gender Mainstreaming ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Gender Policy ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The World ◽  
Gender Policies

Background:Over the past decade gender mainstreaming has gained visibility at global health organisations. The World Bank, one of the largest funders of global health activities, released twoWorld Development Reportsshowcasing its gender policies, and recently announced a $1 billion initiative for women’s entrepreneurship. We summarise the development of the Bank’s gender policies and analyse its financing of gender projects in the health sector. This article is intended to provide background for future research on the Bank’s gender and global health portfolio.Methods:First, we constructed a timeline of the Bank’s gender policy development, through a review of published articles, grey literature, and Bank documents and reports. Second, we performed a health-focused analysis of publicly available Bank gender project databases, to track its financing of health sector projects with a gender ‘theme’ from 1985-2017.Results:The Bank’s gender policy developed through four major phases from 1972-2017: ‘women in development’ (WID), institutionalisation of WID, gender mainstreaming, and gender equality through ‘smart economics’. In the more inclusive Bank project database, projects with a gender theme comprised between 1.3% (1985-1989) and 6.2% (2010-2016) of all Bank commitments.  Most funding targeted middle-income countries and particular health themes, including communicable diseases and health systems. Major gender-related trust funds were absent from both databases. The Bank reports that 98% of its lending is ‘gender informed’, which indicates that the gender theme used in its publicly available project databases is poorly aligned with its criteria for gender informed projects.Conclusion:The Bank focused most of its health sector gender projects on women’s and girls’ issues. It is increasingly embracing private sector financing of its gender activities, which may impact its poverty alleviation agenda. Measuring the success of gender mainstreaming in global health will require the Bank to release more information about its gender indicators and projects.

scholarly journals Gender and Gender-Based Violence

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Brown Wollenberg
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Policy Development ◽  
Grey Literature ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Organizational Level ◽  
Gender Inequalities ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
And Gender

Action Against Hunger is an international non-governmental organization with six headquarters located around the world that focus on ending hunger in low and middle-income countries. The Canadian office uniquely provides evidenced-based technical support and evaluation for headquarters focused on implementing interventions and programming to mitigate hunger. For my practicum I worked in the International Gender Unit to support ongoing policy development and updating of the organization’s cross-network gender policy. Gender inequalities have direct causal links with malnutrition; yet, in March 2020 the Global Nutrition Report showed that global efforts to mitigate hunger by addressing gender inequalities are behind on most targets. To better capture and learn how to address underlying inequalities and drivers of malnutrition, my practicum research focused on the associations and non-associations between gender, gender-based violence, and malnutrition. This practicum placement had three objectives: 1) to provide a literature review 2) to provide a database comprised of peer-reviewed and grey literature; and, 3) to support new policy development during cross-headquarters discussions, research, and reporting. During this placement I had the opportunity to work online with individuals across five continents and twenty-one countries. This included facilitating break-out policy discussions during policy meetings, as well as semi-structured interviews that were conducted prior to providing a literature review and socio-ecological discussion on gender, gender-based violence and malnutrition. The opportunity to engage in international and cross-cultural collaborative work has been the highlight of my practicum. It has provided the opportunity to not only sharpen my reflexive praxis as a student of public health, but to sharpen my understanding of the policy process at the organizational level. It has additionally illuminated the importance of structural and social contexts in public health research and programming, especially within efforts to address gender inequalities and gender-based violence associated with malnutrition.

scholarly journals Mainstreaming as rhetoric or reality? Gender and global health at the World Bank

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Janelle Winters ◽  
Genevie Fernandes ◽  
Lauren McGivern ◽  
Devi Sridhar
Keyword(s):  
Global Health ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Grey Literature ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
Gender Mainstreaming ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Gender Policy ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The World ◽  
Gender Policies

Background:Over the past decade gender mainstreaming has gained visibility at global health organisations. The World Bank, one of the largest funders of global health activities, released twoWorld Development Reportsshowcasing its gender policies, and recently announced a $1 billion initiative for women’s entrepreneurship. However, the development of the Bank’s gender policies and its financing for gender programmes have never been systematically analysed by external researchers in the context of global health. We use the Bank as a case study of how global health organisations frame their gender policies and measure their success.Methods:We constructed a timeline of the Bank’s governance of gender, through a review of published articles, grey literature, and Bank documents and reports. Additionally, we performed the first health-focused analysis of two publicly available Bank gender project databases, and tracked the Bank's financing of gender projects in the health sector from 1985-2017.Results:The Bank’s gender policy developed through four major phases from 1972-2017: ‘women in development’ (WID), institutionalisation of WID, gender mainstreaming, and gender equality through ‘smart economics’. In the more inclusive of the two Bank project databases, gender projects comprised between 1.3% (1985-1989) and 6.2% (2010-2016) of all Bank commitments, which is significantly less than the Bank’s claim that 98% of its lending is gender informed. Most funding targeted middle-income countries and particular themes, including communicable diseases and health systems. Major gender-related trust funds were absent from both databases.Conclusion:The Bank focused most of its health sector gender projects on women’s and girls’ issues. It is increasingly embracing private sector financing of its gender activities, which may impact its poverty alleviation agenda. Measuring the success of gender mainstreaming in global health will require the Bank and global health organisations to reconsider their use of gender indicators.

scholarly journals Language and gender: Mainstreaming and the persistence of patriarchy

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (263) ◽  
pp. 25-30
Author(s):  
Deborah Cameron
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Gender Mainstreaming ◽  
Feminist Movement ◽  
Gender Inequalities ◽  
Language And Gender ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
And Performance ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Core Issues

AbstractIssues related to gender (and sexuality), largely ignored in the early development of sociolinguistics, have emerged as a cornerstone of the field. Spurred on by the feminist movement and new generations of engaged scholars addressing how language use both reveals and embeds gender inequalities, scholarship on such questions is now “mainstream” across a range of disciplines. Deborah Cameron argues that the primary focus in recent decades on social identity and performance, while path-breaking in many ways, has had the unintended consequence of drawing attention away from core issues of power and patriarchy in terms of gender relations.

scholarly journals Modernizing Gender, Sex and Sexual Orientation Information Practices for Culturally Competent Care: A Rapid Review (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly Davison ◽  
Roz Queen ◽  
Francis Lau ◽  
Marcy Antonio
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Health Equity ◽  
Research Team ◽  
Grey Literature ◽  
Health Inequities ◽  
Rapid Review ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Information Practices ◽  
Orientation Information ◽  
And Gender

BACKGROUND Outdated gender, sex, and sexual orientation information practices in healthcare contribute to health inequities for sexual and gender minorities (SGM). Some governments, statistics organizations and healthcare services have developed and implemented modernized practices that support health equity for SGM. Extending the work of our research team, we conducted a rapid review of grey literature to explore information practices that support quality healthcare for SGM. OBJECTIVE To elucidate modern gender, sex and sexual orientation information practices from leading agencies for adaptation, adoption and application by healthcare providers and organizations seeking to redress outdate information practices that contribute to health inequities for SGM. METHODS We searched MEDLINE and Google from 2015 to 2020 with terms related to gender, sex, sexual orientation, and electronic health/medical records for English-language grey literature resources including government and non-governmental organization publications, whitepapers, data standards, toolkits, healthcare organization and health quality practice and policy guides, conference proceedings, unpublished academic work and statistical papers. Peer-reviewed journal articles were excluded, as were resources irrelevant to information practices. In addition to reviewed search results, we screened references sections of included articles for additional resources, and canvassed an working group of international topic experts for resources. Duplicates were eliminated. ATLAS.tiTM was used to support analysis. Themes and codes were developed through an iterative process of writing and discussion with the research team. RESULTS Twenty-six grey literature resources met the inclusion criteria. The overarching theme that emerged from the literature are the congruent behaviours, attitudes and policies that constitute SGM cultural competence: shared language with unambiguous definitions of GSSO concepts; welcoming and inclusive care environments and affirming practices to reduce barriers to access; healthcare policy that supports competent healthcare; and adoption of modernized GSSO information practices and EHR design requirements that address invisibility in health data. CONCLUSIONS Health equity for sex and gender minoritized people requires a holistic approach to systemic change that equips the agencies and agents in healthcare with the tools they need to cultivate modern attitudes, policies and practices with respect to sex and gender diversity that enable health equity. Adopting small but important changes to the language and terminology used to interact with SGM and their care records is a core requirement for institutionalizing SGM-competence in human and technical systems. Modern GSSO information practices both depend on and reinforce SGM-competency in healthcare.

Responding to sexual violence: Women’s mobilization in war

2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 220-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne-Kathrin Kreft
Keyword(s):  
Nongovernmental Organizations ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Positive Association ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
Causal Mechanism ◽  
Gender Inequalities ◽  
Active Involvement ◽  
And Gender

Gender scholars show that women in situations of civil war have an impressive record of agency in the social and political spheres. Civilian women’s political mobilization during conflict includes active involvement in civil society organizations, such as nongovernmental organizations or social movements, and public articulation of grievances – in political protest, for example. Existing explanations of women’s political mobilization during conflict emphasize the role of demographic imbalances opening up spaces for women. This article proposes a complementary driving factor: women mobilize politically in response to the collective threat that conflict-related sexual violence constitutes to women as a group. Coming to understand sexual violence as a violent manifestation of a patriarchal culture and gender inequalities, women mobilize in response to this violence and around a broader range of women’s issues with the goal of transforming sociopolitical conditions. A case study of Colombia drawing on qualitative interviews illustrates the causal mechanism of collective threat framing in women’s collective mobilization around conflict-related sexual violence. Cross-national statistical analyses lend support to the macro-level implications of the theoretical framework and reveal a positive association between high prevalence of conflict-related rape on the one hand and women’s protest activity and linkages to international women’s nongovernmental organizations on the other.

Gender Mainstreaming and Climate Change

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Alston
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
Gender Mainstreaming ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Gender Inequalities ◽  
Radical Feminist ◽  
Transnational Organizations ◽  
The Social

Women and girls are disproportionately impacted by climate change, not because of innate characteristics but as a result of the social structures and cultural norms that shape gender inequalities. Feminist activists and transnational organizations continue to voice their concerns regarding the need for greater attention to gender inequalities in the context of climate change. Gender mainstreaming is a policy process designed to address the gendered consequences of any planned actions—the ultimate aim being to achieve gender equality. Gender mainstreaming emerged in the late 1990s at the Beijing Women’s Conference as a result of the frustrations of feminist activists and international nongovernmental organizations about the lack of attention to gender equality. Yet its implementation has been hampered both by a lack of vision as to its purpose and by ongoing tensions, particularly between those who espouse equality and those who support the mainstream. This has led to resistance to gender mainstreaming within departments and units that are charged with its implementation, and indeed a reluctance of key players to commit to gender equality. Yet there is still strong support for the original feminist intent from activists and researchers addressing the impacts of climate change. The transformational potential of gender mainstreaming is still viewed as a process that could address and challenge gender inequalities in the context of increasing climate challenges. However, there are barriers that must be overcome for the transformational potential of gender mainstreaming to be realized. These include equating climate justice with gender justice, ensuring that the radical feminist intent of gender mainstreaming is not co-opted by the neoliberal agenda of maximizing economic development over gender equality and women’s empowerment, and ensuring that organizations tasked with facilitating gender mainstreaming not only understand its intent but also address gender inequalities within their own organizational structures and practices.

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