"Best Gender Practices" Honored on International Women's Day

Photo: David Spitz/PAHO)

A Bolivian project that reduced deaths of mothers and children in rural areas and a Mexican effort to improve diabetes care for men and women were honored as winners of the first "Best Practices Incorporating a Gender Equality Perspective in Health" contest at an observance of International Women's Day, held Mar. 8 at Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The winning projects were selected from among 44 entries from 18 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. The contest, organized by PAHO's Gender, Ethnicity, and Health Unit, sought to recognize and encourage efforts to incorporate a gender-equity perspective into health interventions and policies, to make them more effective and to encourage changes in gender relations that improve quality of life for both men and women.

The Bolivian project, "Constructing Bridges between the Community and Health Services with a Gender and Intercultural Approach," focused on two heavily indigenous communities in the department of La Paz.

The project worked through existing women's organizations to empower their members to advocate for their own health rights, including better access to quality health care, and to improve their own health behaviors in such areas as contraception and prevention of sexually transmitted infections.

The project also worked to sensitize men toward more equitable gender relations and encouraged stronger relations between women's organizations and municipal authorities and health providers.

The project succeeded in reducing maternal mortality by 75 percent and infant mortality by 50 percent in the target population. It was carried out by the Bolivian nongovernmental organization PROCOSI with support from Save the Children, the Andean Development Corporation, and Project Concern International.

The Mexican winner, "Incorporation of a Gender Perspective in Priority Health Programs: Program for Prevention and Control of Diabetes Mellitus," used a gender perspective to improve care and prevention of diabetes, the number-one cause of death among women in Mexico and the number-two cause among men.

The project identified differences in risk factors among men and women and in how men and women with diabetes seek and receive health care, then used that information to develop appropriate health promotion materials for each sex as part of a national campaign to improve diabetes prevention and care. Different pamphlets were produced for men and women, with different recommendations for seeking medical care and increasing their physical activity, based on men's and women's different social roles and cultural attitudes.

The project was carried out by the National Center for Gender and Reproductive Health Equity as part of the Mexican Ministry of Health's Women and Health Action Program, 2001-2007.

PAHO Director Mirta Roses presented the contest awards to Aurora del Río Zolezzi, assistant director general for gender equity in Mexico's Ministry of Health, and Silva de la Vega, project coordinator for PROCOSI.

Also on hand for PAHO's March 8 celebration of International Women's Day was Rekha Mehra, senior economist, gender and development, in the World Bank's Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network. Mehra noted that progress toward greater equality for women has been uneven in developing countries. As of 2004, two-thirds of developing countries had equal proportions of boys and girls enrolled in primary school, as called for in the Millennium Development Goals. Since 1970, life expectancy for women in developing countries has increased 15-20 years. However, in low-income countries, women's employment dropped from 53 percent in 1980 to 49 percent in 2005, and in all developing countries, women on average still earn 22 percent less than men. Moreover, she said, women remain underrepresented in government and leadership positions.

Mehra, author of a recent World Bank study on "gender mainstreaming," said the main focus of this type of work over the past decade has been on the internal processes of development agencies rather than on external operations "on the ground." She said the challenge now for advocates of gender mainstreaming is to develop a more "pragmatic, entrepreneurial" approach that will produce results in the field and generate models that can be followed to better meet the needs of low-income people, both men and women.

Such efforts are doubly important, she added, because addressing gender issues not only improves women's lives but also makes development work in general more effective.

"Engaging women as agents of change benefits women and development," said Mehra.

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