Gender influences on child survival, health and nutrition: a ... - Unicef

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<strong>Gender</strong> Influences On Child Survival, Health And Nutrition: A Narrative Review This section has highlighted that: ‣ Domestic violence presents a considerable risk to the health and well-being of women and their children. Recent research on this issue has demonstrated that child exposure to domestic violence presents risks to child survival due to the following factors: o o Considerable negative effects on maternal health, including increased risk of depression and malnutrition, which can contribute to adverse pregnancy outcomes and negative responses to breastfeeding; Considerable negative effects on child health, including higher stress levels and increased risk of morbidity, as well as low birth weight linked to their mother’s worse health during pregnancy and increased chances of stunting and wasting; ‣ In some contexts, domestic violence may be perceived as a legitimate form of ‘punishment’ especially where gender norms about women’s and men’s roles are particularly rigid. 49
<strong>Gender</strong> Influences On Child Survival, Health And Nutrition: A Narrative Review 2 GENDER-SENSITIVE INTERVENTIONS ADDRESSING CHILD HEALTH AND NUTRITION Introduction This section addresses the question “Which approaches to addressing the impact of gender inequalities, roles and relations on young child survival have been assessed and with what results?” as outlined in the introduction to this document. In order to achieve this, we have reviewed evaluations of interventions which have used an aspect of gender-awareness in their intervention design with the aim of addressing issues around child health and nutrition. As highlighted in the methods section we conducted an extensive search using a number of databases and hand searching journal issues as well as contacting 42 gender and health experts and accessing over 20 websites to ensure we had covered academic and ‘grey’, non-academic literature. Despite using this combination of methods we have identified only 4 evaluated interventions, plus a review of 20 conditional and non-conditional cash-transfer programmes (see Annex I for a table summarizing these evaluations and their findings). While there are important examples of evaluations of interventions which have encompassed aspects of gender in relation to maternal and reproductive health, more needs to be done to plan and evaluate gender dimensions of child health and nutrition initiatives. The following sections explore these interventions in three categories: first, those addressing service delivery; second, those addressing community participation; and third, those beyond the realm of health and nutrition programmes, addressing social protection and financial inclusion (e.g. cash transfers and micro-credit schemes). It is important to note that although most of the interventions identified do not explicitly refer to the concept of gender in their description of their activities, they have been included because their approach implicitly addresses dimensions of gender explored in the review. 2.1 ADDRESSING SERVICE DELIVERY Service delivery through facility-based services produces considerable barriers that are gendered and structural and relate to women’s freedom to travel, the distance they might be required to travel and the costs incurred through user fees. Furthermore, facilities are not always male-friendly and may place emphasis on women to attend, thus discouraging parents to share responsibility for accessing healthcare for their children. GENDER SENSITIVE INTERVENTIONS There are other issues in expecting women to use facility-based services. As seen in section 1.3.1 of the review, one of the problems with encouraging women to engage in paid labour through microcredit schemes lies in the potential for such ‘extra’ work to impede on women’s already tight schedules. This potential clash of ‘benefits’; one being increased income for women and their families; the other being their access of healthcare provision for their children; may be addressed through the provision of such healthcare services at more appropriate times or in more appropriate places for women and their families. 50
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Page 3 and 4: ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This review was co
Page 5 and 6: TABLE OF FIGURES Figure 1: Diagram
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Gender influences on child survival, health and nutrition: a ... - Unicef

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