Gender perspective is lacking in health actions in favour of women, says Nadine Gasman

Carolina Gomez Mena

The newspaper La Jornada
Wednesday, July 24, 2024, p. 15

Health actions aimed at women have been very focused on their reproductive function, said Nadine Gasman, president of the National Institute for Women (Inmujeres), who explained that Traditionally there is a blindness or myopia in relation to the specificities of women in health both in regards to diagnoses and treatments as well as in research..

In the discussion on Gender Equality, Health and Information for Decision Making, she said that There is a need to question more the physical, psychological and social differences that determine women’s health.

Should be Strengthen information systems with disaggregated data, not only by age and sex, but also by geographic level and by priority attention groups: indigenous, Afro-Mexican and rural women, and this is achieved by including the gender perspective with a comprehensive vision of the life cycle, identifying gender roles and stereotypes and the sexual division of labor..

Ruy López Ridaura, Undersecretary of Prevention and Health Promotion of the Ministry of Health, explained the need to have Increasingly fair policies, which are not only based on information, but also on an ideological component of justice and of closing gaps. Not only is there a lack of information, but also political will to close those gaps..

She pointed out that in order to generate public policies, an analysis of the inequalities suffered by vulnerable people and populations, such as migrants, indigenous people, and groups of sexual orientation and diversity, is required.

It is necessary, he said, to ensure that the results of the analysis are integrated into a single intelligence core through the National Public Health Service, whose purpose is to strengthen collective health actions, through the efficient articulation of policies, programs, surveillance actions and control of social determinants that improve people’s well-being.

Graciela Márquez, president of the National Institute of Statistics and Geography, spoke about the contributions of the Satellite Account of the Health Sector, which measures the production of goods and services related to prevention, rehabilitation and health care, including unpaid work.

The account reports that in 2022 the health sector accounted for 5.1 percent of the national GDP; of that total, the public sector accounted for two percent and the private sector fluctuated around another 2 percent, and unpaid work in health care reached 0.8 percent.

Moni Pizani, UN Women representative in Mexico, said that gender discrimination limits access to health and predisposes to greater harm in this area. She said that generating evidence and improving the production of statistics, indicators and analysis is essential to support policies that incorporate a vision of interdependence of the human rights of women and girls, as is the case of the right to health and the right to care.