Paragraph 90 of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/20
90. Women have different and unequal access to and use of basic health resources, including primary health services for the prevention and treatment of childhood diseases, malnutrition, anaemia, diarrhoeal diseases, communicable diseases, malaria and other tropical diseases and tuberculosis, among others. Women also have different and unequal opportunities for the protection, promotion and maintenance of their health. In many developing countries, the lack of emergency obstetric services is also of particular concern. Health policies and programmes often perpetuate gender stereotypes and fail to consider socio-economic disparities and other differences among women and may not fully take account of the lack of autonomy of women regarding their health. Women’s health is also affected by gender bias in the health system and by the provision of inadequate and inappropriate medical services to women.
Beijing Declaration (1995)
Basic healthcare amounts to a human right to decent livelihood and an okay life based on one’s circumstances in general compared to the surrounding area. There is, in many ways, an expectation of the moderate possibility of a better among many in the world.
Women require different health and medical needs than men. The primary health services around the world must recognize this and coordinate around this. Without the appropriate access to the health provisions to prevent some of the common but lethal diseases and health issues, women, and girls, will be shortchanged more than the men.
Furthermore, many families can be left without a mother. In many contexts, with the disproportionate burden of home and childcare thrust on women, this raises the obvious implication of worse issues in the childcare and homecare spheres with the loss of the mom.
The policies, programs, and initiatives should take a gendered lens. It is this view that gives an ability to see women’s and girls’ problems within a unique frame of health challenges, and then to work to incorporate them into the framework.
The gynecological and obstetric care for women is poor or non-existent in many developing countries. It has improved, likely, but circa 1995 it was even worse than now. The autonomy of women regarding their bodies, to make independent choices about the outcomes of their bodies.
These, often, can be infringed on by either social patriarchal system or paternalistic religions that do not recognize the independence and autonomy of women.
This represents, also, the gender bias in societies. Not only in the large national systems as a wholw but also by relevant particular domains such as the healthcare system, because the provisions for women are “inadequate and inappropriate.” All serious concerns about the health and wellness outcomes of women.
–One can find similar statements in other documents, conventions, declarations and so on, with the subsequent statements of equality or women’s rights:
- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Preamble, Article 16, and Article 25(2).
- Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960) in Article 1.
- The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) in Article 3, Article 7, and Article 13.
- International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966).
- Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979).
- Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984).
- The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (1993).
- Beijing Declaration(1995).
- United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000).
- Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (2000).
- The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa or the “Maputo Protocol” (2003).
- Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence or the Istanbul Convention (2011) Article 38 and Article 39.
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