A framework to identify gender indicators for reproductive health and nutrition programming.

The importance of including gender in population health and nutrition (PHN) programming has gained acceptance in the last decade and was given a significant boost after the Interagency Gender Working Group (IGWG) was established in 1997. The IGWG’s Subcommittee on Research and Indicators took upon itself the task of articulating the role of gender in PHN programming and of explicitly including gender in monitoring and evaluation activities. The subcommittee members drawing on their years of experience working on PHN and gender issues in developing countries developed a framework for incorporating gender into the design and evaluation of PHN programs and provided a large set of examples as a tool for PHN program planners. This paper introduces that framework. The focus is at the level of interventions not changes in behavior or health status at the population level such as would be measured in a Demographic and Health Survey. MEASURE Evaluation2 provides resources on a wide range of population and health indicators including their gender implications; MEASURE DHS+3 in both the core survey questionnaire and the gender module provides data at the population level. It is not the intention of the authors of this paper to provide a comprehensive or definitive list of gender indicators or to discuss how to make the standard PHN indicators more gender sensitive. Rather this paper offers a way of thinking about gender that makes it relevant for PHN programming and evaluation. It is one step along the path to understanding and measuring the role of gender in the PHN sector. The four specific objectives of this paper are: to articulate a rationale for including gender in PHN programming; to define gender and several aspects of gender in ways that make it easier to include in PHN programming; to suggest a framework for identifying and addressing gender-related constraints to achieving PHN objectives using a detailed set of illustrative examples; and to identify some generally applicable gender themes including obstacles indicators and monitoring of changes. (excerpt)