Integrating gender analysis into research

Gender is a powerful social determinant of health across a person's life, by influencing factors such as risk-taking and health-seeking behaviours, exposure to health risks and vulnerability to diseases. Gender norms, roles and relations can also influence experience of health care, in terms of affordability, access and use of services and products, and interaction with healthcare providers. Gender also intersects with other factors that can shape health outcomes and inequalities, such as age, ethnicity, and socio-economic status; it is important to understand how gender interacts with other aspects of a person's identity to create unique experiences of discrimination, privilege and exclusion

Adopting an intersectional gender lens in IR can enable a deeper understanding of how gender intersects with other social stratifiers to influence various health outcomes and whether, how and why given implementation strategies work in the real world. An intersectional gender lens can also promote research studies and findings that are nuanced, specific and have broader applicability to a population when various social stratifiers have been considered throughout the research process.

Throughout this toolkit, we have included signposts at key points to encourage users to think critically through issues related to gender dimensions and their linkages with other social variables. Users interested in exploring the topic of gender and intersectionality in infectious disease research are recommended to refer to: Incorporating intersectional gender analysis into research on infectious diseases of poverty: a toolkit for health researchers (TDR, 2020).