Claire Somerville. 2020. Why global health can offer more on gender. British Medical Journal Global Health. 5(4).

In this commentary Claire Somerville explains the need to advance conceptual theorising on gender in the field of global health.

In global health the objective of achieving gender equality has mainly relied on implementing technologies of gender mainstreaming, which has generated many normative and action-oriented policies often led by the key global health actors. But this push for gender equality generated little critical reflection or theorising on the broader social role of gender in health.

Beyond social constructivism global health needs to rethink gender by taking account of new cellular, genomic and epigenetic knowledge that disrupt the core against which gender theorising and polices of mainstreaming have developed. Moreover intersectional approaches to global health are necessary as gender cannot be taken in isolation of other axes of discrimination and disadvantage, privilege and advantage.

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