Abstract
The importance of promoting gender equality and human rights in sexual and reproductive health (SRH) programmes and policies has been affirmed in numerous international and regional agreements, most recently the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Given the critical role of research to determine what works, we aimed to identify research gaps as part of a broader priority setting exercise on integrating gender equality and human rights approaches in SRH programmes and policies. A systematic literature review of reviews was conducted to examine the question: what do we know about how research in the context of SRH programmes and policies has addressed gender equality and human rights and what are the current gaps in research. We searched three databases for reviews that addressed the research question, were published between 1994–2014, and met methodological standards for systematic reviews, qualitative meta-syntheses and other reviews of relevance to the research question. Additional grey literature was identified based on expert input. Articles were appraised by the primary author and examined by an expert panel. An abstraction and thematic analysis process was used to synthesize findings. Of the 3,073 abstracts identified, 56 articles were reviewed in full and 23 were included along with 10 from the grey literature. The majority focused on interventions addressing gender inequalities; very few reviews explicitly included human rights based interventions. Across both topics, weak study designs and use of intermediate outcome measures limited evidence quality. Further, there was limited evidence on interventions that addressed marginalized groups. Better quality studies, longer-term indicators, and measurement of unintended consequences are needed to better understand the impact of these types of interventions on SRH outcomes. Further efforts are needed to cover research on gender equality and human rights issues as they pertain to a broader set of SRH topics and populations.
Highlights
Sexual and reproductive health (SRH) affects, and is affected by the intersectionality of people’s personal experiences and relationships and by the broader structural context of their lives which shapes their overall health and well-being
This review highlights that progress has been made over the last fifteen years on research related to inclusion of gender equality and human rights interventions in SRH policies and programming, but fundamental gaps remain
Much more has been published on gender equality interventions than human rights-based interventions in the SRH literature
Summary
Sexual and reproductive health (SRH) affects, and is affected by the intersectionality of people’s personal experiences and relationships and by the broader structural context of their lives which shapes their overall health and well-being. In the past two decades, great strides have been made in the development of norms and standards related to gender equality and human rights pertaining to SRH and the interpretation and application of existing standards to different areas of SRH programming and policy making. This is true at the level of international policy, as well as at policy and programmatic levels within countries. Is the achievement of gender equality a goal in itself (i.e. Goal 5), but there is a specific target within that goal on universal access to SRH and rights (i.e. target 5.6), in addition to the target(i.e. target 3.7) on sexual and reproductive health in the health goal (i.e. Goal 3).[6]
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