ABSTRACT
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.
ABSTRACT
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.
ABSTRACT
Health promotion has long aspired for a world where all people can live to their full potential. Yet, COVID-19 illuminates dramatically different consequences for populations bearing heavy burdens of systemic disadvantage within countries and between the Global South and Global North. Many months of pandemic is entrenching inequities that reveal themselves in the vastly differential distribution of hospitalization and mortality, for example, among racialized groups in the USA. Amplified awareness of the intimate relationship between health, social structures, and economy opens a window of opportunity to act on decades of global commitments to prioritize health equity. Choices to act (or not act) are likely to accelerate already vast inequities within and between countries as rapidly as the COVID-19 pandemic itself. Recognizing the inherently global nature of this pandemic, this article explores how determinants of equity are embedded in global responses to it, arguing that these determinants will critically shape our global futures. This article aims to stimulate dialogue about equity-centered health promoting action during a pandemic, using the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research (CCGHR) Principles for Global Health Research to examine equity considerations at a time of pandemic. Attentiveness to power and the relationship between political economy and health are argued as central to identifying and examining issues of equity. This article invites dialogue about how equity-centered planning, decision-making and action could leverage this massive disruption to society to spark a more hopeful, just, and humane collective future.