Gender-Transformative Public Health Approaches

Abstract

The growing recognition that gender inequalities shape health inequities is contributing to the development and strengthening of gender transformative approaches (GTA) in public health. Many of these approaches attempt to integrate considerations of intersectionality, including sex and gender-based analysis plus (SGBA+) in the Canadian context. The inclusion of intersectionality within current GTAs represents progress in advancing gender equality and health equity; however, they do not yet reflect the true potential of intersectionality to transform public health. Arguably, the interplay of the full range of complex factors and influencing forces and structures of power that underpin health inequities is not adequately accounted for. Doing this requires moving beyond a primal focus on sex and gender (and most often women) as well as binary and outdated notions of gender. It requires understanding inequities as not being restricted to gender but as inseparable from other factors such as class, race/ethnicity, sexuality, immigration status, geography, and ability – without any presumption of ranking. As such, what is needed is a more robust intersectionality-informed analysis and concrete action to understand experiences of health inequities, who is at disproportionate risk, the differences between groups of people at disproportionate risk, and how appropriate population health responses can be crafted and respond to social groups most at risk. Only then can the ultimate goal of GTA – to transform power inequities – be fully realized.