In honour of International Women’s Day on March 8, 2023 we have 5 resources that look at disparities in women’s health.
1. BIPOC Women’s Health Network
Resources for Healthcare Professionals
Resources for Patients
“The BIPOC Women’s Health Network aims to provide healthcare resources for serving racialized women in local Canadian communities. We believe providing information that is culturally-sensitive, anti-oppressive, multilingual, feminist, and pro-choice is crucial to addressing healthcare disparities faced by BIPOC women. Our organization is dedicated to accomplishing these goals by providing education for health care providers, medical students, and patients. We are committed to improving healthcare access, advocating for patients, and empowering women to take control of their health.”
2. World Health Organization – Women’s Health
“Being a man or a woman has a significant impact on health, as a result of both biological and gender-related differences. The health of women and girls is of particular concern because, in many societies, they are disadvantaged by discrimination rooted in sociocultural factors. For example, women and girls face increased vulnerability to HIV/AIDS.
Some of the sociocultural factors that prevent women and girls to benefit from quality health services and attaining the best possible level of health include:
- unequal power relationships between men and women;
- social norms that decrease education and paid employment opportunities;
- an exclusive focus on women’s reproductive roles; and
- potential or actual experience of physical, sexual and emotional violence.
While poverty is an important barrier to positive health outcomes for both men and women, poverty tends to yield a higher burden on women and girls’ health due to, for example, feeding practices (malnutrition) and use of unsafe cooking fuels (COPD).”
Carducci B, Keats EC, Amri M, Plamondon KM, Shoveller J, Ako O, et al. (2022). PLOS Glob Public Health 2(10): e0001105.
“Despite governmental efforts to close the gender gap and global calls including Sustainable Development Goal 5 to promote gender equality, the sobering reality is that gender inequities continue to persist in Canadian global health institutions. Moreover, from health to the economy, security to social protection, COVID-19 has exposed and heightened pre-existing inequities, with women, especially marginalized women, being disproportionately impacted. Women, particularly women who face bias along multiple identity dimensions, continue to be at risk of being excluded or delegitimized as participants in the global health workforce and continue to face barriers in career advancement to leadership, management and governance positions in Canada. These inequities have downstream effects on the policies and programmes, including global health efforts intended to support equitable partnerships with colleagues in low- and middle- income countries. We review current institutional gender inequities in Canadian global health research, policy and practice and by extension, our global partnerships. Informed by this review, we offer four priority actions for institutional leaders and managers to gender-transform Canadian global health institutions to accompany both the immediate response and longer-term recovery efforts of COVID-19. In particular, we call for the need for tracking indicators of gender parity within and across our institutions and in global health research (e.g., representation and participation, pay, promotions, training opportunities, unpaid care work), accountability and progressive action.”
4. The Silence and the Stigma: Menopause in Canada. (2022).
“The Menopause Foundation of Canada’s landmark research of Canadian women aged 40 to 60 shows that among those going through perimenopause/menopause, more than half (54%) believe the topic is still taboo. A shocking one in two women (46%) feel unprepared for this stage of life. Even more remarkable, four in 10 women report feeling alone. How can something that happens to more than 50% of the population be such a mystery?”
5. Global Gender Gap Report 2022: Insight Report. (2022).
“The Global Gender Gap Index benchmarks the current state and evolution of gender parity across four key dimensions (Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment). It is the longest-standing index which tracks progress towards closing these gaps over time since its inception in 2006. This year, the Global Gender Gap Index benchmarks 146 countries, providing a basis for robust crosscountry analysis. Of these, a subset of 102 countries have been represented in every edition of the index since 2006, further providing a large constant sample for time series analysis. The Global Gender Gap Index measures scores on a 0 to 100 scale and scores can be interpreted as the distance covered towards parity (i.e. the percentage of the gender gap that has been closed). The cross-country comparisons aim to support the identification of the most effective policies to close gender gaps.”
For more information you can also see The World Economic Forum’s page “Health equity for women and girls: Here’s how to get there“
