Written By: Lucas Ercolin
February 8, 2020
Promoting and achieving gender equity in leadership roles, thereby creating female role models, will open new possibilities for women and create a positive effect that will spread throughout the whole of society. While targeting leadership roles, we must also target gender equity among health professionals who are in direct contact with patients, especially in the humanitarian sector.
As the mission pharmacist for Première Urgence Internationale in Iraq, although others before me in the same position were all women, I noted that the local pharmacists were all men. Yet gender-specific health care is a major need in the humanitarian sector, where issues such as gender-based violence, family planning and basic gynaecological and obstetric health arise.
Imagine the following: a refugee woman attends a mobile health clinic or a primary healthcare centre, receives triage from a nurse, has an appointment with a physician and then goes to receive medicines from a pharmacist. There is reasonable chance that she will not see a woman among the health professionals during that journey. Will she be comfortable in every situation to receive care from an all-male health team? Will the male health professionals be able to provide appropriate medicines regardless of their own, possibly sexist, beliefs? Finally, will the donor’s grant guidelines allow the procurement of gender-specific medicines, such as contraceptives?
Knowing that women make up the major part of the pharmaceutical workforce worldwide, I decided to tackle this gender gap in the recruitment processes at all levels from field workers to those coordinating the organisation’s efforts. For all the opened positions, only three female pharmacists applied, and two were accepted to join the mission. Neither of them stayed. This suggests that recruitment difficulties are multifactorial.
A possible reason is linked with the risk connected with humanitarian work: being based in a camp or in a mobile clinic may carry a security concern that affects women in particular. This may discourage potential candidates from applying. Moreover, the local culture may be challenging for women, who are sometimes expected to be based at home often do not have the means to be mobile. This was one of the reasons for one of the candidates not being selected for a position that required extensive travelling across the country.
Another candidate faced a different issue: the authorities did not support her contract. This kind of direct political influence led to the closure of the project in the region.
These experiences show that in order to close the gender gap in the humanitarian sector and among pharmacists in direct contact with patients in strongly patriarchal societies, different approaches need to be taken. For example:
Ensure there are dedicated areas for women in the healthcare workforce, especially for those with direct patient contact, thereby increasing women’s empowerment and safety
Promote internal gender equity policies while having a culturally aware view of the local context
Define boundaries to deal with potentially sexist practices by staff and external individuals
Advocate for change in sexist policies and those that discriminate against women in governmental institutions, in particular those from humanitarian donors
However, even if our refugee woman had entered the health facility and had the option to meet with female health professionals along the way while looking for contraceptives, it could still be a challenge — not only from the local culture, but also because of the donor’s guidelines, which may ban the procurement of medicines for family planning.
Movement towards gender equity should come from all sides: from the field, by welcoming women and changing culture; from leaders, through providing globally impactful policies; and from men, whose awareness of the importance of change must be increased.