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Mainstreaming as rhetoric or reality? Gender and global health at the World Bank.

ABSTRACT: Background: Over the past decade gender mainstreaming has gained visibility at global health organisations. The World Bank, one of the largest funders of global health activities, released two World Development Reports showcasing its gender policies, and recently announced a $1 billion initiative for women's entrepreneurship. We summarise the development of the Bank's gender policies and analyse its financing of gender projects in the health sector. This article is intended to provide background for future research on the Bank's gender and global health portfolio. Methods: First, we constructed a timeline of the Bank's gender policy development, through a review of published articles, grey literature, and Bank documents and reports. Second, we performed a health-focused analysis of publicly available Bank gender project databases, to track its financing of health sector projects with a gender 'theme' from 1985-2017. Results: The Bank's gender policy developed through four major phases from 1972-2017: 'women in development' (WID), institutionalisation of WID, gender mainstreaming, and gender equality through 'smart economics'. In the more inclusive Bank project database, projects with a gender theme comprised between 1.3% (1985-1989) and 6.2% (2010-2016) of all Bank commitments. Most funding targeted middle-income countries and particular health themes, including communicable diseases and health systems. Major gender-related trust funds were absent from both databases. The Bank reports that 98% of its lending is 'gender informed', which indicates that the gender theme used in its publicly available project databases is poorly aligned with its criteria for gender informed projects. Conclusion: The Bank focused most of its health sector gender projects on women's and girls' issues. It is increasingly embracing private sector financing of its gender activities, which may impact its poverty alleviation agenda. Measuring the success of gender mainstreaming in global health will require the Bank to release more information about its gender indicators and projects.

SUBMITTER: Winters J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6113881 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Mainstreaming as rhetoric or reality? Gender and global health at the World Bank.

Winters Janelle J Fernandes Genevie G McGivern Lauren L Sridhar Devi D

Wellcome open research 20180817

<b>Background:</b> Over the past decade gender mainstreaming has gained visibility at global health organisations. The World Bank, one of the largest funders of global health activities, released two <i>World Development Reports</i> showcasing its gender policies, and recently announced a $1 billion initiative for women's entrepreneurship. We summarise the development of the Bank's gender policies and analyse its financing of gender projects in the health sector. This article is intended to prov ...[more]

PMID: 30175239

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Project description:PurposeIn Uganda, sweetpotato [Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam] is typically a "woman's crop," grown, processed, stored and also mainly consumed by smallholder farmers for food and income. Farmers value sweetpotato for its early maturity, resilience to stresses, and minimal input requirements. However, productivity remains low despite the effort of breeding programs to introduce new varieties. Low uptake of new varieties is partly attributed to previous focus by breeders on agronomic traits and much less on quality traits and the diverse preferences of men and women in sweetpotato value chains.MethodTo address this gap, breeders, food scientists, and social scientists (including gender specialists) systematically mainstreamed gender into the breeding program. This multidisciplinary approach, grounded in examining gender roles and their relationship with varietal and trait preferences, integrated important traits into product profiles.ResultsBuilding on earlier efforts of participatory plant breeding and participatory varietal selection, new interventions showed subtle but important gender differences in preferences. For instance, in a study for the RTBFoods project, women prioritized mealiness, sweetness, firmness and non-fibrous boiled roots. These were further subjected to a rigorous gender analysis using the G+ product profile query tool. The breeding pipelines then incorporated these gender-responsive priority quality traits, prompting the development of standard operating procedures to phenotype these traits.ConclusionFollowing an all-inclusive approach coupled with training of multidisciplinary teams involving food scientists, breeders, biochemists, gender specialists and social scientists, integration into participatory variety selection in Uganda enabled accentuation of women and men's trait preferences, contributing to clearer breeding targets. The research has positioned sweetpotato breeding to better respond to the varying needs and preferences of the users.

Project description:ObjectivesSocial prescribing is a way of linking patients in primary care with sources of support within the community to help improve their health and well-being. Social prescribing programmes are being widely promoted and adopted in the UK National Health Service and so we conducted a systematic review to assess the evidence for their effectiveness.Setting/data sourcesNine databases were searched from 2000 to January 2016 for studies conducted in the UK. Relevant reports and guidelines, websites and reference lists of retrieved articles were scanned to identify additional studies. All the searches were restricted to English language only.ParticipantsSystematic reviews and any published evaluation of programmes where patient referral was made from a primary care setting to a link worker or facilitator of social prescribing were eligible for inclusion. Risk of bias for included studies was undertaken independently by two reviewers and a narrative synthesis was performed.Primary and secondary outcome measuresPrimary outcomes of interest were any measures of health and well-being and/or usage of health services.ResultsWe included a total of 15 evaluations of social prescribing programmes. Most were small scale and limited by poor design and reporting. All were rated as a having a high risk of bias. Common design issues included a lack of comparative controls, short follow-up durations, a lack of standardised and validated measuring tools, missing data and a failure to consider potential confounding factors. Despite clear methodological shortcomings, most evaluations presented positive conclusions.ConclusionsSocial prescribing is being widely advocated and implemented but current evidence fails to provide sufficient detail to judge either success or value for money. If social prescribing is to realise its potential, future evaluations must be comparative by design and consider when, by whom, for whom, how well and at what cost.Trial registration numberPROSPERO Registration: CRD42015023501.

Project description:BackgroundGender mainstreaming has been central to the development agenda for advancing gender equality globally for nearly three decades. We examined key learning across gender mainstreaming models and experiences and assess key successes and challenges in actualising gender mainstreaming's transformative potential, in order to inform future research agendas.MethodsWe reviewed 27 years of peer-reviewed literature on gender mainstreaming (1995-2022) and described scholarly publishing trends on the topic based on a set of 528 articles and bibliographic data retrieved from the Scopus database and supplemental coding. The review provides a thematic synthesis of the extant literature, assessing the evidence base to identify gaps and opportunities for future research and collaboration with practitioners. We also contextualise recent research by tracing common threads of scholarly and practitioner discussions over the last two decades.ResultsPublications on gender mainstreaming have increased, primarily from authors with European and USA academic affiliations and funding. Gender mainstreaming in the health and law and policy sectors has been researched most frequently. Trends in co-authorship suggest increasing collaboration among academics, yet limited collaboration among researchers and practitioners. Widespread low citation counts raise concerns about engagement with the literature. Key challenges in gender mainstreaming identified include conceptual clarity, academic-practitioner disjunctures, politics, leadership and organisational culture, men's roles, intersectionality, monitoring and evaluation, and public health sectoral concerns.ConclusionsThe gender mainstreaming literature has expanded considerably over the last 25 years, yet there remain critical knowledge gaps, theoretical inconsistencies, weak research methods and evaluation processes, and implementation challenges. Funders, researchers, and practitioners have failed to prioritise bridging north-south and academic-practitioner divides in gender mainstreaming policy, programmes, and research. Integration of intersectionality also remains nascent. A more inclusive, collaborative, and structured research agenda on gender mainstreaming is needed to effect greater change in the face of persistent and new challenges. Engaging and empowering regional women's organisations, collaborative learning and research programmes, and joint research and advocacy groups; implementing gender-attuned editorial policies; and incorporating gender mainstreaming in educational curricula are recommended.

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Mainstreaming as rhetoric or reality? Gender and global health at the World Bank.

Publications

Mainstreaming as rhetoric or reality? Gender and global health at the World Bank.

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