Over the last 25 years, there have been bold commitments towards tackling gender inequalities in global health, but these commitments have not been met by commensurate shifts in the underlying structural or systemic drivers of these inequalities.
Despite decades of commitments, talk remains the substitute for action in tackling gender inequalities in global health. For example, the development of treatments, vaccines, diagnostics, and other forms of medical innovation to this very day continue to neglect the health of women and girls. In this episode, we explore the misappropriation and misuse of gender-transformative language and the negative impact this has had on addressing gender inequalities in global health. We are joined by our host, Johanna Riha, and guest speaker Anju Malhotra, who talks to us about a provocative think piece she recently wrote on the topic. We also hear reactions to Anju’s think piece from Jennifer McCleary-Sills and Geeta Rao Gupta.
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Podcast Episode 2: Transforming Health Systems for Gender Equality
While women represent 70% of the global healthcare workforce, only 25% of them hold senior roles. One result of this bias is that health systems are not designed to address the needs of women and girls, and often reinforce gender inequalities. In this episode, host Johanna converses with three health system experts on what health system transformation for gender equality looks like. They also discuss how gender power inequalities manifest in health systems and how to better build bridges across movements working towards equality without side-lining any one agenda for maximising effectiveness.
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Podcast Episode 3: The Utility of “Gender Transformative” Language in Evaluating Health Programmes
Bold commitments towards gender equality in health must be met with concrete changes to the underlying structural and systemic drivers for true transformation to occur. In this episode, host Johanna hears perspectives from those evaluating health programmes. They discuss the utility of gender-transformative language in health programme evaluation and explore how programmes can change norms, attitudes, and power relations. The guest’s highlight that health programme evaluation is more than just rubber-stamping—saying whether an intervention was transformative or not. The work as evaluators has to go beyond this and be more comprehensive and complex to really analyse what parts of the programme benefit women independently of the outcome, giving communities a voice in this analysis. The episode ends with the call to use language strategically to drive gender equality in global health.
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