The Role of Female Health Worker in the Global Community
Dr. Paulyn Jean Rosell Ubial, Past Department of Health Secretary
Gender refers to the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed. This includes norms, behaviours and roles associated with being a woman, man, girl or boy, as well as relationships with each other. As a social construct, gender varies from society to society and can change over time.
Gender is hierarchical and produces inequalities that intersect with other social and economic inequalities. Gender-based discrimination intersects with other factors of discrimination, such as ethnicity, socioeconomic status, disability, age, geographic location, gender identity and sexual orientation, among others. This is referred to as intersectionality.
Gender interacts with but is different from sex, which refers to the different biological and physiological characteristics of females, males and intersex persons, such as chromosomes, hormones and reproductive organs. Gender and sex are related to but different from gender identity. Gender identity refers to a person’s deeply felt, internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond to the person’s physiology or designated sex at birth.
Gender influences people’s experience of and access to healthcare. The way that health services are organized and provided can either limit or enable a person’s access to healthcare information, support and services, and the outcome of those encounters. Health services should be affordable, accessible and acceptable to all, and they should be provided with quality, equity and dignity.
Gender inequality and discrimination faced by women and girls puts their health and well-being at risk. Women and girls often face greater barriers than men and boys to accessing health information and services. These barriers include restrictions on mobility; lack of access to decision-making power; lower literacy rates; discriminatory attitudes of communities and healthcare providers; and lack of training and awareness amongst healthcare providers and health systems of the specific health needs and challenges of women and girls.
Consequently, women and girls face greater risks of unintended pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections including HIV, cervical cancer, malnutrition, lower vision, respiratory infections, malnutrition and elder abuse, amongst others. Women and girls also face unacceptably high levels of violence rooted in gender inequality and are at grave risk of harmful practices such as female genital mutilation, and child, early and forced marriage. WHO figures show that about 1 in 3 women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime.
Harmful gender norms – especially those related to rigid notions of masculinity – can also affect boys and men’s health and wellbeing negatively. For example, specific notions of masculinity may encourage boys and men to smoke, take sexual and other health risks, misuse alcohol and not seek help or health care. Such gender norms also contribute to boys and men perpetrating violence – as well as being subjected to violence themselves. They can also have grave implications for their mental health.
Rigid gender norms also negatively affect people with diverse gender identities, who often face violence, stigma and discrimination as a result, including in healthcare settings. Consequently, they are at higher risk of HIV and mental health problems, including suicide.
This is especially impacted and the differences in Gender Roles and burden especially felt if the woman is a health care worker. More than 60% of the entire Global Health Care population are females because caring for the sick as well as the very young and very old is a stereo-type role attributed by many societies and cultures to women. Because of their child-bearing capacities it is a natural attribute to assign the caring role for very young children, the ill in the family and the elderly to women. But this should not be the case, gender roles should not be attributed to reproductive roles, thus women in most societies experience double burden and stereo-typing due to this attribution, thus health care workers are mostly, majority are women.
Women in healthcare according to Mckinsey and Co. survey done in US/Canada in 2021, reveal that women workers are twice as likely as men to cite parenthood and increased home responsibilities as reason for missing out on opportunities for promotion. I believe this situation is true worldwide in almost any country…the double burden faced by women is real. Even if they participate in the labor force esp health care workers, their home responsibilities are still there, and it affects their job advancement in more ways than their male counterparts. Healthcare industry continues to outperform other industries in female representation at all levels of the talent pipeline. The same survey showed that at entry level positions, 66% are women an increase of 3% over previous year’s survey results, compared to only 49% average in other industries. While the share of women declines in more senior roles, moving to onpy 30% at the C-suite (top management) positions, however healthcare female participation still out performs all other industries.
The above report shows that on many measures health care is one of the best industries for women. Overall, the health sector employs more women and experience a limited gender gap in promotions, a significantly better job satisfaction and good compensation package than other industries like financial services, automotive and industrial manufacturing. There is indeed reason to celebrate as healthcare seems to be the best employer of women all around. It is the industry that their inherent skills and instinctive behaviors are very apt like caring, compassion and emotional supportiveness.
We can change this by reconstruction the roles of males and females in society, they can be equally assigned as cares for the sick, the very young and very old and males can take on professions in the health sector just as comfortably and efficiently as women. There is a need to educate the next generation so we can attain gender balance in this profession and help remove the stereotype on women. Part of the medical curriculum must be a gender sensitivity training or short course as Gender Issues are now being main streamed in the primary and secondary education curriculum…We must deconstruct the gender roles so that men as well as women have an opportunity for practice in the health care community without stigma or discrimination. There must be no biases and social divide, oftentimes we hear in the households…You are female you should be a Nurse, You are male you should be a Surgeon…but any gender can do as well in any of these health sector jobs.
We can say that a paradigm shift has happened or the Gender balance is attained in Global Community if we see more male health care workers and the proportion is already 50% or more and the corporate top level or the law profession has more females (these are the professions assigned to males as the master of the house and breadwinner).
We hope to see a Gender Fair world, hopefully in our lifetime. Its now 30 years since the Beijing Platform for Action for women empowerment and removing gender biases and stereo-types…we have made great strides in educating the next generation but it is not enough since many professions are still male dominated and females are relegated to stereo-type role professions like majority of women are in health care, household cleaners, kitchen and restaurant helpers, secretaries and receptionists.
Thank you very much. Arigato gosaymas…
DR PAULYN JEAN ROSELL UBIAL
MEDICAL DIRECTOR OF PHILIPPINE TUBERCULOSIS SOCIETY INC.