Research gaps related to gender issues and population, health, and nutrition programs : summary of an analysis

Clear guidance on how to make RH programs gender-sensitive, however, requires research, including biomedical, policy/programmatic, and social science studies. This summary of a longer document on research gaps associated with gender and RH (PN-ACK-907), first outlines the fundamentals of "gender-sensitive" RH research. Next, it highlights the gender issues related to 15 aspects of RH that were included in the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women (FWCW) agendas. These 15 aspects are: adolescents; behavior change communication; child survival; environmental and occupational health; female genital cutting; HIV/AIDS/sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and condom use; infectious diseases and RH; infertility; post-abortion care; post-menopausal women; quality of care; RH and reproductive rights; safe motherhood; violence against women; and other issues, such as the imbalance of power between men and women. The concluding sections of the summary provide a short bibliography of research studies on the topic that best exemplify a gender perspective, as well as a matrix that includes the top three to five gender-related research issues for each aspect of RH. (Author abstract, modified)