Gender sensitivity in the service delivery environment
"Gender sensitivity" is the way service providers treat male or female clients in service delivery facilities and thus affects client willingness to seek services, continue to use services, and carry out the health behaviors advocated by the services. This indicator also measures aspects of the services themselves (e.g., in the case of family planning (FP), whether a range of male as well as female methods is offered).
Scores from items selected below:
Menu of Indicators: Gender-Sensitive Service Delivery Context
-- Staff receptive to men in clinic; -- Materials (posters, pamphlets) directed to men visible and available;
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External assessment by an individual familiar with organizational behavior, gender issues, and reproductive health programs. Alternatively, a self-assessment by senior management, based on international standards adapted to the local setting.
This set of indicators is presented as a menu from which evaluators may select those most applicable to a given service delivery environment. Evaluators may expand this list to include other items of interest in the local context.
For a service delivery facility to demonstrate gender sensitivity, it must adhere to the principles of informed choice, voluntarism and a target-free approach, which might otherwise not be the case given the low status of women in the locality. A gender-sensitive approach has much in common with a quality of care approach. A program cannot be gender-sensitive if both male and female clients fail to receive complete information and to participate fully in decisions regarding their care and treatment. Many women want opportunities to involve their partners in counseling and in decisions concerning contraceptive use and reproductive and child health. Similarly, many men wish to participate in reproductive health counseling as well as in decisions regarding reproductive and child health, but have felt excluded from this arena.
access, gender, quality