Not only what you do, but how you do it: working with health care practitioners on gender equality

The Women's Health Project, School of Public Health, Johannesburg, South Africa, has for more than the past decade been running various gender and health training courses for participants from at least 20 different countries. In this paper I interrogate the motivation behind and methods of the gender training and offer three prompts that assist facilitators in promoting participants' understanding of gender theory. (1) Does this program/action take gender into account? (2) Does this program/action challenge gender norms? (3) Does this program/action promote women's autonomy? Examples of training sessions are described to illustrate how our methods iterate with the content of the courses and, in particular, how the training links to actions practitioners may engage in to redress gender inequalities at work. I go on to argue that both structural and inter-relational aspects of health programs are important in addressing gender and health concerns and discuss the impact of such training on participants and health services.