Advancing Gender Equality
TWO COUNTRIES
Girls wear pink, boys wear blue. Girls like dolls, boys like trucks. Girls are sensitive, boys are tough.
These familiar refrains might seem innocuous, but our gendered world has lasting effects on how children grow up to understand themselves, the choices they make and the situations they confront – and critically, this gendered world has a powerful impact on health. Take, for example, the fact that globally, road traffic injuries are more frequent in men than in women, reflecting male gender norms related to driving, risk-taking, and alcohol use. Likewise, in certain societies where girls are seen as a lesser financial asset than boys, parents invest less in girls’ health and education, reflected in differences in access to care for common childhood illnesses.
These examples show that advancing gender equality and health for all requires an understanding of the spoken and unspoken rules societies have about acceptable male and female behaviour, and the impact these rules have on the likelihood of illness or injury.
In recent years, PIH Canada has emerged as an internal resource on this topic within the PIH network. We have worked side-by-side with our colleagues in Haiti to gender-disaggregate data from mobile malnutrition clinics, allowing us to ask important questions about why we are seeing higher rates of malnutrition among girls under the age of five.
We have supported our colleagues in Sierra Leone, Haiti, and Malawi to strengthen services for survivors of gender-based violence, which is most often experienced by women but perpetrated by men. And here in Canada, we have updated our employee leave policies so they can better act as levers for gender equality at work and at home.
Looking to the future, we hope to expand on this role by proactively exploring opportunities to support our colleagues in the design, delivery, monitoring, and evaluation of gender-responsive programs. Our starting point will be to deepen our understanding of the incredible work our colleagues are already doing in the space, and then to identify the ways in which we can magnify their impact.
The aid landscape in Canada is strongly influenced by the federal government’s Feminist International Assistance Policy, which aims to eradicate poverty and build a more peaceful, inclusive, and prosperous world by advancing gender equality and empowering women and girls. Deepening our work in this space will bring direct benefit for the populations and public sector partners PIH aspires to serve. We are excited to begin work on this new initiative and look forward to sharing updates about its impact in the months and years to come.
