This document is designed to promote the introduction of a gender perspective into communication for development initiatives in rural areas, and suggests practical ways of going about this. It consists of two parts.
Gender
Gender roles and relations impact a broad array of health issues. Social norms and expectations of how men and women should behave contribute to problems such as violence against women and the transmission of HIV/AIDS. Discrimination against women and girls also results in the neglect of issues that uniquely affect them, such as maternal mortality, and also results in a lack of attention to the causes and consequences of disease that impact men and women differently. Gender concerns are gaining increasing importance in health communication programs.
Gender perspectives arise from communities’ knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes. Communication messages and interventions can either reinforce those norms or help communities to establish new ones. It can also affect the understanding and acceptance of new health behaviors. Including gender concerns in health communication programs can make health messages more effective and stimulate awareness of the need for equity in gender roles. That awareness can help communities find culturally appropriate ways to change existing beliefs, attitudes, and social norms that restrict gender equity and equality.
Photo: Female government health and development employees and volunteers at a celebration in rural Zambia.
© 2005 Jarret Cassaniti, Courtesy of Photoshare
Planning for Life aims to improve the health of young men and women ages 10-24 by addressing their reproductive health
needs and by promoting the integration of reproductive health (RH) and family planning (FP) as critical components of youth
The purpose of the Gender Guide is to encourage the incorporation of gender-based roles and responsibilities in the design, implementation, and evaluation of health communication programs.
This is a compilation of practical resources for gender integration and mainstreaming in health policies, programs and institutions. It is designed as a companion to the IGWG website, a site for gender and reproductive health information, publications and networking.
This framework seeks to address the intersection of women's empowerment and media development. Its main focus is on the equality and gender dimensions of social diversity in the media.
This is a hands-on WHO tool to integrate gender into HIV/AIDS programs. The tool helps program managers and health-care providers in the public and private sectors integrate gender into HIV/AIDS programs they wish to set up, implement and evaluate so they are more responsive to women's needs.
Research shows that young people need chances to learn about gender equality and human rights, particularly because these issues affect their sexual lives, and indeed, their happiness. Most sex education programs have lagged in applying these findings.
This manual is designed to help trainers in conducting workshops for religious leaders and women leaders of faith on gender-based violence and HIV. Training is organized into four sessions and includes instruction for various activities to be included as part of the training. It is structured as a three day session.
The Operational Guide tries to make the relationship between gender, human rights and HIV/AIDS obvious to those working in the development sector. More than that, it seeks to give guidance to development programmers and practitioners on how to keep these complex linkages in mind when going about their daily business.
This guideline sets out what is required of services and individual practitioners to provide gender-sensitive care for women, men and people who identify as transgender or intersex.
From 2009 to 2011, ICRW collaborated with government, civil society, and donor organizations in Uganda and Cambodia to do the following:
• Identify strengths and gaps in how these two countries’ national strategies, policies and action plans address gender inequality as a social driver of HIV;
This resource is from the Brothers for Life campaign, which was launched in 2009 and seeks to address the risks associated with multiple and concurrent partnerships, sex and alcohol abuse, and gender based violence; and which also promotes HIV testing, male involvement in PMTCT, and other health seeking behaviors.
African Transformation™ helps women and men explore gender norms and social roles, and provides them with tools to begin changing the negative and reinforcing the positive.
This is the main website listing the resources from the Brothers for Life campaign which was launched 2009 to address the risks associated with multiple and concurrent partnerships, sex and alcohol abuse, and gender based violence and which also promoted HIV testing, male involvement in PMTCT and other health seeking behaviors.
This toolkit is a selection of resources on the role of traditional leaders and culture in preventing HIV and gender-based violence (GBV).
This toolkit contains a comprehensive set of research and program interventions designed to reduce girls' vulnerability to HIV. Field tested in Botswana, Malawi, and Mozambique, Go Girls! follows a socio-ecological approach to HIV prevention by working with communities, parents, schools, and youth to protect girls.
The Gender Roles, Equality and Transformations (GREAT) Project works to improve gender equity and reproductive health in Northern Uganda.
This video describes the story of nine-month-old twins Devki and Rahul who were brought by their mother to the Nutrition Rehabilitation Centre in Kolaras, located in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Rahul was a normal weight and size for his age, yet his sister Devki weighed just over half of what she should have.
Program H (for men) and Program M (for women) were born out of a belief that changing rigid, inequitable, homophobic and violent versions of what it means to be a man are key to achieving health, achieving women’s and girls’ empowerment and central to social justice efforts. Program D (for diversity) was then added.
