Gender Discrimination and Health Workforce Development: An Advocacy Tool

Background and Sources of Information

This tool is drawn from the CapacityPlus 2012 systematic review, Transforming the Health Worker Pipeline: Interventions to Eliminate Gender Discrimination in Preservice Education (Ng, Newman, and Pacqué-Margolis 2012). The authors compiled over 300 peer-reviewed articles, reports, program documents, and websites from around the world that documented interventions or strategies to counter gender discrimination in higher education. From these resources, 51 specific interventions were identified for review and ranking by an expert panel. The interventions included in this tool are those recommended by expert reviewers, who considered the extent to which the interventions were “gender-transformative.” Gender-transformative approaches are any activities that “actively strive to examine, question, and change rigid gender norms and imbalances of power as a means of reaching health as well as gender equity objectives” (USAID Interagency Gender Working Group).

This accompanying technical brief summarizes the systematic review’s approach.