Gender and Health Sector Reform: Analytical Perspectives on African Experience

Abstract

This chapter argues that despite the silences, health sector reform models are implicitly gendered: that is, they have gender built inaudibly into their assumptions. The chapter explores analytical approaches the gendered nature and impacts of health sector reform: gender equity, women’s health needs and gendered health systems frameworks. Our objective is conceptual: to examine health sector reform through a gender ‘lens’, considering how the reform framework is gendered and the extent to which that gendered process may operate to the detriment of women, especially poor women. We illustrate our arguments with empirical evidence drawn largely but not exclusively from Africa, and consider implications of the analysis particularly for the African context.