Ordinance of the Ministry of Health, published this Wednesday (8), at the Federal Official Gazette (DOU), establishes the National Program for Gender, Race and Valuation of Female Workers in the Unified Health System (SUS).
The program seeks to modify what the text itself cites as “male and racist structures that operate in the division of work in health”, in addition to facing different forms of violence related to work in health.
The publication also highlights the embracement of health workers in the maternity process (daily care of children under their responsibility) and the promotion of the embracement of women considering their life cycle in the context of health work.
The ordinance also guarantees actions for the promotion and rehabilitation of mental health, considering the specificities of gender and race, and actions to promote training and permanent education in health, considering intersectionalities at work.
According to the ordinance, the ministry will make public calls for the selection and execution of projects, directed at federal entities, educational institutions or non-profit civil society organizations that are interested in developing actions within the scope of the program.
“It will be encouraged that the managers of the Unified Health System, at the state, municipal and district levels, carry out, in their territory, intersectoral articulation with security, education, policy for women and social assistance for the elaboration of joint equity strategies of gender and confronting violence against women in the workplace.”
Among the principles of the program listed by the ministry are:
– the inadmissibility of all forms of discrimination and prejudice based on gender, race or any type of violence in the field of health work, refuting any behavior, practices and speeches that generate discriminatory and prejudiced acts and that consist of means of expressing and institutionalizing relationships social domination and oppression;
– the secularity of the State, through public policies formulated, implemented, monitored and evaluated independently of religious principles, in order to effectively ensure the rights enshrined in the Federal Constitution and in the various national and international instruments signed by the Brazilian State;
– equity, in order to achieve social justice and ensure the human rights of the different social groups of SUS workers;
– the transversality of the gender and race equity policy in all public policies, aiming to be present in all SUS programs and policies to increase the degree of contact and communication between people and groups, without hierarchy;
– the broad defense of isonomy of rights between gender and race, understood as the adoption of practices of equality between women and men, considering the diversity of race and ethnicity, and constituting a fundamental pillar of organizational management and institutional success;
– participation and social control, since the debate and participation of SUS workers in the formulation, implementation, evaluation and social control of public policies must be guaranteed.
