Indrani Gupta, one of the commissioners of The Lancet Commission on Gender and Global Health, and Head of the Health Policy Research Unit, Institute of Economic Growth, said at the report launch: "Misunderstandings of gender have contributed to unequal health outcomes and we urgently need to tackle the gap in research, ideas and action on gender in global health. In India we have to guard against any backsliding in the progress we have made in understanding gender and health, especially in the context of a global wave towards an anti-gender view of the world."
Three main biases in relation to gender exist even in the global health sector, that have resulted in misdirected actions. These are:
- Gender and sex can be used interchangeably. While sex and gender can influence each other in various ways, they are not interchangeable terms;
- Gender relates only to women and girls. Health policy makers often use gender as shorthand for talking about women and girls rather than gender as a relational construct;
- Gender has little effect on most health outcomes. The global health community tends to overlook the role of gender in health outcomes, except in relation to the sexual and reproductive health of women and girls. However gender affects health outcomes across a broad range of conditions, including infectious diseases, non-communicable diseases, mental health disorders, and injuries.
Gender diversity and intersectionality
A noted activist and writer Farah Naqvi sums this up succinctly: the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in 1994 (and its Programme of Action), which was followed closely by the Beijing Declaration 1995 (and its Platform for Action, which were adopted at 4th World Conference on Women), are landmark documents that outline a comprehensive agenda for women's empowerment and gender equality.
Farah added that ICPD 1994 followed closely by Beijing Declaration 1995 gave a new traction to the phrase "gender equality". And policymakers adopted it, not because they understood the potential depth of this term, but because it had become the language of international currency. In India (perhaps in other countries too) gender became a mere synonym for woman. It signified nothing else. Women and development became gender and development; women's equality became gender equality, justice for women, became gender justice; budgeting for women, became gender budgeting. It was a change of a term, but it did not carry any deeper meaning forward.
"When you are asked about gender diversity in your workplaces, for the most part it meant how many women do you employ. That is what gender diversity is perceived as. So in terms of policies (including for education and health), representation and inclusion were turned into bodily presence. Basically, we brought in more women and girls. But a gender lens is not about an add-on to an existing template of policy or programme. It means a discussion on how do women - as gendered beings with cultural histories of educational denial - learn? How do girls who have been told to shut up being visible and not have an opinion, learn to express themselves?"
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