Background on Implementation
Despite some laudable progress, discrimination, de fact ineqaulity, is the enemy of and the barrier to the highest attainable standard of health for females. Like a bright ans shining cord, equality of women and men is woven through every powerful UN document from the original charter to today's efforts. In the lives of the world's females of every age, that equality has not become reality, and remains a goal still to be reached. The degree of de facto inequality that defines a direct hazard to the health of the female half of global humanity will be eradicated only by active, aware and accountable effort.
The Beijing Platform of Action clearly articulates Strategic Objectives, C 1 through C 5, for women and health. Implementation is still a work in progress, demanding ongoing advocacy , and the full value of women's voices heard in places of power. Knowledge and understanding of the essentials for positive change for better women's health has expanded rapidly as the report of the Expert Group Meeting on Women and Health clearly illustrates (EGM/HEALTH/1998/Report, website location: http://www.un.org.womenwatch/daw/csw/healthr.htm).
Today we recognize the need to pay aware and informed attention to the particular health needs of women at every age of their lives; girls, adolescent girls, mature and older women. It is essential that the future secure and ensure better health for the female half of the world's population. On that base of gender equality, health, peace and sustainable development are possible.
Framework Topics on Implementation
We recommend and suggest the following framework for discussion, strategy, advocacy and actions:
Human rights is the foundation essential for the mental and physical health of girls, women and older women. Empowerment to excercise those rights is necessarily for women, or the result is illusion, as insubstantial and ineffective as words in the wind.
Violence against women as a health hazard causing injury, grave risk of illness, neglect , and exploitative practices resulting in a blighted and often disabled existence. This topic includes the full spectrum of gender violence from the interpersonal to armed conflict.
Stereotypes, myths, and attitudes that shape and determine the status of women and obstruct progress toward better health for women, including practices that perpetuate stereotypes and dehumanized status for women.
Places at those "tables of power" that decide ans control policies, programs, resource allocation, reasearch and data collection, and active participation by girls, mature and older women in adequate numbers to be influential.
Prevention and disease control programs for TB, malaria, STDs and HIV/AIDS, including outreach programs for girls, mature and older women, particularly thise in vulnerable, exploited and devalued situations. There are clear casual links between the degradation of the environment and disease due to preventable contamination of water, air and soil. The routine releases of radiation resultant from nuclear militarism adversely affect women's health.
Basic empowerment and the right of women to control every aspect of their health and fertility, and to have the information, means, and services necessary to do so.
The work of women, economic parity, occupational and environmental health (Platform 253D, EGM 47-50), including both the renumerated and the traditionally "invisible" work, the health impact of multiple roles and time-demands and societal expectations that characterize the labor of females of every age.
Sexual and reproductive health at all ages, including the need for confidential, non-judgmental, accessible, compassionate services for girls, adolescents, women and older women and particularly those in situations of captivity, coercion, fear, threat, and imposed isolation. Address and contradict the myth and false assumption that pregnancy, though normal, is risk free.
The role of men in full partnership to accomplish those changes necessary to attain the highest possible standard of health for females. Men, half of the population, obviously bear at least half the burden of producing positive changes. With the advantage of privelege and power, perhaps more.
Health personnel and the need to build capacity for delivery of quality care and services to women by adequate training and retraining in the human rights of women and the gender perspective. Address the need for continuing education in thesse areas of ethics and competence.
Gender based research design, data collection and dissemination is essential. Address the need to ensure a critical mass of women health professionals ans women subjects involved at every level, and address the fact that research is the basisfor deciding policy and planning for women's health.
Resources, financing and the reform of policies, allocations and "political will" with regard to women's health. Annually, global militarism devotes 800 billion USD$ to goals of death and destruction. Reallocation of resources and redefining policies towards goals of life would benefit the health of women, men and children equally.
Each of the above topics is a particular view of the broad picture of women and health as we prepare to go into a new century. Separation of these topics serves to emphasize, by obvious overlap, that the health needs of women are holistic and cut accross sectors, all spheres of female life. It is easy to see that there is no possibility of an administrative "box" that is without responsibility to consider the impact of sex and gender on women's health.
The Task Force on Health offers these concepts to help frame thinking, discussion, strategies and actions essential to ensure better health for women in the future, and to support the advocacy that is here today.
