Gender Inequality and Restrictive Gender Norms: Framing the Challenges to Health

Contrary to popular belief, gender is not captured by ticking M or F on a form.  Instead, it is a complex social system that structures the life and experience of all human beings.

This paper explores the relationships between gender inequality, restrictive gender norms and health and wellbeing.  Building upon past work, we offer a consolidated conceptual framework that illustrates how individuals born biologically male or female, evolve into gendered beings, and how sexism and patriarchy intersect with other forms of discrimination, such as racism, classism and homophobia, to structure pathways to poor health.

We describe and substantiate these pathways including how gender inequality and restrictive gender norms affect health through differential exposures, health behaviours, and access to care, as well as how health research and health systems reinforce and reproduce gender inequalities, with serious implications for health.

The cumulative consequences of structured disadvantage – mediated through discriminatory laws, policies and institutions, as well as diet, stress, substance use and environmental toxins– have spawned important discussions about the role of social injustice in the creation and maintenance of health inequities, especially along racial and socioeconomic lines. This paper raises the parallel question of whether discrimination based on gender, likewise becomes “embodied,” with negative consequences for health. 

For decades, advocates have worked to eliminate gender discrimination in the global health arena, with only modest success.  We need a new plan and new political commitment if we are to achieve our global health aspirations and the wider Sustainable Development Goals.