Section 1: Integrating gender analysis and actions into the work of WHO
Equal rights and opportunities mean better health for women and girls: how is WHO contributing?
The 2007 WHO Gender Mainstreaming Strategy and corresponding World Health Assembly resolution 60.25 urges WHO and Member States to formulate strategies for addressing gender inequality in health policies, programmes and research and to ensure that a gender-equality perspective is incorporated in all levels of health-care delivery and services.
The Gender, Women and Health Network (GWHN) - comprised of headquarters, regional and country office units working on gender, women and health - play a catalytic role in implementing this Strategy. Concretely, this has meant consistently working in the areas of capacity building and promoting sex-disaggregated health data and gender analysis as a means of strengthening WHO's performance and enhance technical collaboration with Member States and partners to identify and address health challenges for women and men.
The resolution also aims at institutional change by assessing and addressing gender differences and inequalities in the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of WHO's work. A significant achievement in 2009 was to, in collaboration with the Department of Planning, Resource Coordination and Performance Monitoring (PRP), introduce a "gender classification" in WHO's general management system that will allow the Organization to monitor programmatic actions on gender equality - and ultimately, the ability of WHO to identify and address health inequalities for women as well as men.