How to do gender analysis in health systems research: A guide
This guide provides an overview of how you can incorporate gender analysis into your health systems research, including: (1) disaggregating your data by sex; (2) organizing your thinking using frameworks; and (3) using gender analysis questions. It also discusses how you can incorporate gender into the overall research process.
Many donors now require that health systems research takes account of gender. However, all too often the inclusion of gender in health systems research is regarded as a ‘tick-box’ exercise, or it is considered an ‘add-on’, an extra task that is sometimes considered irrelevant.
Within RinGs we believe that analysis of gender (and other intersecting axes of inequality) is vital to ensuring quality health systems research and that gender analysis done well can deliver insights which have the potential to revolutionise policy and practice.
In our publications and tools we aim to: provide practical advice on how to overcome the barriers and impediments to gender analysis; suggest tools and techniques that health systems researchers can take up in their work and learn together about what works under what circumstances.
Included within the guide are two useful frameworks: a gender analysis framework to help you think about what constitutes gendered power relations, and a framework which provides an overview of the different ways in which gender can be incorporated in health systems research.
If you are just starting out in your research career, or if you have been conducting research for some time but have not given the issue of gender much thought until now, this guide is for you.
We hope that as a result you will see gender analysis as not just another – last minute – chore to be performed, but as something that can significantly enhance the relevance, robustness and rigour of your work.
The majority of the information included in this brief is taken from the paper: “How to do (or not to do…) gender analysis in health systems research”, published in Health Policy and Planning.