FINAL DRAFT GENDER POLICY FOR WHO - World Health …



GENDER POLICY FOR WHO

Executive Summary

1. Ensuring equal opportunities for women and men and improving women’s status are important prerequisites for improving levels of world health and ensuring sustainable development. Consistent with UN Policy, WHO has committed itself to pursue gender equity and to mainstream gender in all its activities.[1] In October 1998 Cabinet gave the cluster on Evidence and Information for Policy (EIP) responsibility for finalising a policy statement on gender mainstreaming, in collaboration with other parts of WHO, and for co-ordinating resulting activities. This document outlines the recommendations of the Gender Policy for WHO, and spells out what activities need to take place at different levels of the Organization to ensure its implementation.

2. The ultimate goal of WHO’s gender policy is to ensure better health for women and men. The specific objective is to ensure that WHO policies/programmes and activities include an analysis of gender issues in order to:

a) increase the coverage, effectiveness and efficiency of WHO’s programmes and activities;

b) promote gender roles and relations that protect health, promote equality between women and men and contribute to the attainment of social justice; and

c) provide information and policy advice to Member States on the influence of gender on health and health care, based on both quantitative and qualitative data.

3. Gender is used to describe those characteristics of women and men which are socially constructed, and sex refers to those which are biologically determined. While biologically determined differences are universal, social differences between women and men are learned, changeable over time and vary both within and between cultures.[2] Gender interacts closely with biological differences, and other social variables like class in determining health exposures and outcomes. Gender analysis identifies, examines and informs action to address inequalities that arise from the different roles of women and men or the unequal power relationships between them, and the consequences of these inequalities on their lives, their health and wellbeing. The way power is distributed in most societies means that women have less access to and control over resources to protect their health and are less likely to be involved in decision-making.

4. In health, gender analysis contributes to the understanding of differentials between women and men in, for example, risk factors and exposures; manifestations, frequency and severity of disease and social responses to it; access to resources to protect health; and distribution of power and responsibilities in health care. Gender interacts with others determinants such as class and ethnicity, as well as with biological differences.

5. Mainstreaming gender is “the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programmes, in any area and at all levels. It is a strategy for making women’s as well as men’s concerns and experiences an integral dimension in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and social spheres, such that inequality between men and women is not perpetuated”.[3]

6. This “is both a technical and a political process which requires shifts in organisational cultures and ways of thinking, as well as in the goals, structures and resource allocations. It requires changes at different levels in institutions, in agenda setting, policy making, planning, implementation and evaluation. Instruments for mainstreaming include staffing and budgeting practices, training programmes, policy procedures and guidelines.”[4]

7. Gender mainstreaming will only be fully achieved if senior management adopts and supports the recommendations of this document and ensures it is transmitted to all staff. It is also important that adequate resources are committed to ensure mainstreaming gender is an integral part of WHO’s core work and structure and not seen as an optional activity to be carried out when donor support is available.

8. The most important requirement of the gender policy is that all parts of WHO should routinely incorporate a gender perspective into the development of policies, programmes and activities. All levels of the Organization must develop mechanisms for ensuring this takes place. GPE/EIP will coordinate the development of the necessary methodologies and provide guidance to undertake the required gender analysis. . At Headquarters (HQ) GPE will collaborate on this with the inter-Cluster Gender Working Group (GWG) which it regularly convenes, with inputs from similar groups or focal points in the Regional Offices. Regional and country offices will develop their own mechanisms, and collaborate with HQ to develop strategies to promote the integration of gender issues in health systems, working jointly with Ministries of Health, research institutions, other UN agencies, NGOs, and civil society.

9. Departments and Teams at all levels of the Organization should include gender analysis in their work plans and have an operational plan for implementation. Sufficient funds should be allocated to achieve this and at least one person should be made responsible for ensuring that the plans are implemented.

10. The implementation of this policy will be an essential element of the four strategic directions identified by WHO for its future work: reducing the burden of excess mortality and disability; reducing environmental, social, economic and behavioural risk factors for health; developing health systems which are equitable, cost-effective and responsive to people’s needs, and promoting a health dimension to social, economic and development policy.

Cgm 22/9/99

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[1] WHO’s commitment is consistent with a call from the Secretary-General of the United Nations, recommendations of the UN Economic and Social Council in 1997 [2]and the ACC’s adoption in 1998 of a Mission Statement committing all UN agencies to mainstream gender.

[3] European Commission 1997 A guide to gender impact assessment. Employment and social affairs

[4] ECOSOC Resolution E/1997/L.30, adopted by ECOSOC 14.7.97.

[5] Development and Gender Issue 5: Approaches to institutionalising gender. Gender in Brief, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, England, May 1997.

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