In the face of global commitments to achieve gender equality and substantially improve health outcomes by 2030, the time is right to unpick the complex gender/health relationship and identify appropriate and effective solutions to catalyse and sustain gender-responsive change within systems and sectors. Given that health outcomes are only partially driven by the activities of the health system, this requires understanding and addressing the impact of gender across the social/structural determinants of health too. Questions of what, for example, the impact of achieving gender equality within current economic, legal and political systems will include: can a more feminist approach be taken: one that recognises that for health outcomes to be improved for everyone, substantial systemic change is needed – not just gender equality within existing systems, but a more disruptive and radical approach to achieving both rights-based gender equality and health equity through structural change.
This thematic issue of the Health Research Policy and Systems journal will:
- Promote an inclusive, community-informed, decolonial set of strategies that embed gender-responsive structural change within multisectoral global health, focused on both health systems and complex determinants of health.
- Identify clear evidence of “what works” in gender-responsive policies and programmes across multiple sectors for achieving both gender equality and health equity.
The issue will be compiled through engaging with researchers, research teams and evidence derived from relevant programmes on gender and health systems in the Global South. Through a program of workshops, the teams will work with UNU-IIGH to identify, analyse, and synthesise relevant case studies that will contribute to the core themes on what strategies work for gender transformative policy and practice.
