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p. 5 of 8 BACK | NEXT Purpose of the checklist Why is gender important in health projects? Key questions and action points in the project cycle Gender issues in the health sector Gender issues in reproductive health Gender issues in family planning Gender issues in health delivery systems Strategies for gender mainstreaming in health projects

Gender Checklist: health

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Gender issues in reproductive health

Key questions

• What is the incidence of maternal deaths? What are the main maternal risk factors? What are the major clinical, environmental, and socioeconomic causes? Which age groups are the most at risk? What percentage of births are assisted by medically trained midwives?
• What are the childbearing years for women?
• What health problems among the client population predominantly affect women or are female-specific?
• Is violence against women prevalent in the project area? What community or health services are offered to abused women?
• Are there women-to- women services in maternal and child health programs (including reproductive health and family planning)? Does lack of women-to- women maternal and child health services constrain women from using health services?

• Are sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) a problem in the targeted community, for men? for women? Are there societal attitudes that constrain the population from recognizing or reporting such occurrences? Are there cultural constraints on measures to protect against the spread of STDs?
• How prevalent is HIV/AIDS among the client population? Is heterosexual transmission common?
• Is there a relationship between poverty and female sexuality that may contribute to the transmission of HIV/AIDS?
• If HIV/AIDS is a serious health problem, who care for AIDS sufferers?

Objectives and target groups

• Ensure that project objectives explicitly address inequality in access to health care and inadequate responses of health systems.
• Ensure that the project objectives explicitly address the different health needs of males and females.
• Ensure a broad focus on women’s health, and not a limited focus on motherhood.
• Ensure that the target groups identify their own health needs, by involving them in the design of the project. Also consider involving nongovernment or community- based organizations.

• Collect sex-disaggregated data on health stan-dards of males/females, women’s/men’s role in the health sector, the numbers and training levels of male and female health workers, preferences for male or female health workers, women’s/men’s use of and capacity to benefit from health-care services, etc.
• Collect sex-disaggregated data on decision-making pat-terns for family health needs, particularly for reproductive health.

• Integrate in the project capacity- building activities in management and human resource development for women in the health sector.
• Assist the executing agency in recognizing the need and taking action to increase the number of female health service providers by recruiting and training women for all areas of health delivery, as village and community health workers, health educators, doctors, health administrators and managers, nurses, and midwives.
• Provide medical training to traditional birth attendants.
• Train schoolteachers working in the project area, as part of the project, to support initiatives aimed at changing food, hygiene, and sanitation habits, and attitudes regarding family planning that are detrimental to women or their families.
è Refocus the staff and services toward client needs. Train health personnel to provide integrated ser-vices (e.g., family planning, safe abortion, violence, TB immunization).
• Provide training in gender sensitization and in gender planning and participatory approaches for the executing agency.
• Facilitate trust and partnership building between the communities and the formal health system. Improve the organization and training of local health services by establishing small projects to facilitate joint actions by communities and the health system.
• Link the health project to related policies and sectors, e.g., water and sanitation, education, agriculture.

• Improve the knowledge of the target groups about health matters, to enable them to participate in the improvement of health and associated services. Nongovernment or community-based orga-nizations may be involved in such initiatives.
• To draw more women into the project, use interpersonal communication and the services of local women field workers. Engage NGOs to facilitate the involvement of women in project design and implementation.
• Ensure that women have access to all training activities provided by the project, by setting a quota for their participation.

• Promote the development of qualitative and process- oriented gender-sensitive indicators of inputs, outputs, and outcome for program design and for monitoring and evaluation.

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