Gender Equality and Global Health: Practical approaches for gender-transformative change

COURSE FORMAT

This course will not be offered in 2024.

This course is offered with the University of Ottawa.

DESCRIPTION

Gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a healthy, peaceful, and prosperous world. A person’s gender affects their ability to reduce their exposure to risks of poor health, access healthcare, adopt health seeking behaviours, and achieve good health and wellbeing. To be effective, global health programmes must adopt a gender integration approach that systematically works to reduce gender-related barriers to good health and wellbeing and advance gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment.

This introductory course takes a participatory approach to building global health practitioners’ skills to design, implement, monitor, and evaluate gender transformative programmes. The course will follow a typical project cycle (Figure 1), taking participants through key entry points for gender integration at each stage. Faculty from Canadian and global private and public sector institutions (e.g., academia, NGOs, government) will share their real-world experiences in gender integration in global health programmes, and case studies will cover various sub-sectors, such as immunization, nutrition, and malaria. In addition to gender analysis, participants will learn how to apply an intersectional lens to gender-transformative approaches, enhancing their understanding and promotion of social inclusion and the social determinants of health. Participants will be encouraged to share their own experiences with gender integration through group work and short assignments.

Figure 1. Gender integration in the project life cycle.

COURSE DIRECTORS

Alison Riddle, MSc, PhD(c)
PhD candidate, School of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Ottawa
Research Associate at the Bruyère Research Institute

Independent Gender Equality and Global Health Consultant

Carol Vlassoff, PhD
Adjunct Professor, School of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Ottawa
Adjunct Professor at the Bruyère Research Institute

COURSE FACULTY

• Aditi Krishna, Research Director, Iris Group
• Apphia Yuma, Democratic Republic of the Congo Country Officer, Flowminder Foundation
• Eva Rathgeber Fellow, Adjunct Professor, Institute of Development Studies, University of Ottawa
• Janet Hatcher-Roberts, Adjunct Professor, University of Ottawa, School of Epidemiology and Public Health; Co-Director, WHO Collaborating Centre for Knowledge Translation and Health Technology Assessment for Health Equity
• Merydth Holte-McKenzie, Senior Gender Equality Advisor, World Vision Canada
• Sarah Pentlow, Senior Program Officer (Gender Equality), Nutrition International
• Val Percival, Associate Professor, Norman Patterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University
• Vivian Welch, Editor-in-Chief, Campbell Collaboration

Faculty are still being confirmed and there may be changes to the above list.

CONTENT

Each session will be a combination of lecture/presentation by faculty to ground the discussions in research evidence and experience, followed by application through participatory exercises in breakout sessions and group activities. Case studies and assigned readings will help to reinforce key concepts.

1. Introduction to gender equality and global health: theory and evidence
2. Problem definition: Gender-based analysis with an intersectional lens
3. Design: Gender equality in theories of change
4. Implementation: Gender-responsive and -transformative approaches to global health challenges
5. Monitoring and evaluation: Gender-responsive and feminist monitoring and evaluation

OBJECTIVES

• Understand the differences between concepts related to gender and sex, equality and equity, and other related concepts, and why these distinctions are important in global health policy and practice
• Understand the theory and evidence behind the role of gender equality in global health policies, programmes, and commitments
• Understand the meaning and relevance of intersectionality and its application in global health policy and practice
• Understand the “what, why and how” of gender-based analysis in relation to a typical project cycle
• Understand the gender integration continuum and the key characteristics of gender-responsive and gender-transformative programmes
• Understand how to integrate gender equality results and indicators into logic models and performance measurement frameworks
• Understand approaches for assessing program impact applying gender and feminist lens

TARGET AUDIENCE

This course is intended for global health practitioners, policymakers, and researchers in Canada and abroad who are interested in an introductory skills building course in gender integration. The course is designed for participants who have little to no previous experience in this area.

ENROLMENT

Maximum of 100 participants.