Section 3: Health inequalities are the result of systemic failures to realize the right to health for all
In many contexts, women and girls do not have equal access to use, benefit from or participate in decisions around protective laws and policies, health information, care and services as well as education and gainful employment.
Right to property
Social norms and legal rules and processes that deny equal rights and equal opportunities to women and girls expose them to several threats to health and well-being. For example, in many countries, women are not entitled to own property, inherit land or other assets. As a result, women are denied access to essential resources - unless they are connected to men who take care of them. Widows are particularly vulnerable in such situations; when their husbands die they are often left without a home, economic resources or assets to earn a living.
They also do not have decision-making authority over the use of the land or property on which they once lived or worked through either subsistence or commercial farming. Poverty and increased vulnerability to health problems are the common result. Systemic failures such as these deny women and girls their right to health.
Right to security and bodily integrity
Women and girls face diverse barriers to equality including harmful practices that go against the right to security and bodily integrity. Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is estimated to affect 100–140 million women (including those under the age of 15 years) in Africa and Asia. FGM harms the health and well-being of girls and women in many ways, interfering with the natural functioning of girls’ and women’s bodies, causing severe pain with several immediate and long-term physical and mental health consequences, and an increased risk of mortality among babies born to women who have undergone the practice.
Health is a basic human right that is guaranteed in several human rights treaties. The right to health applies to all human beings regardless of their race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, their social origin, property, birth or other status.
Practices that perpetuate gender inequality such as early marriage, sex-selective abortions, son preference and the overall lower social status attributed to women and girls compound the health effects of gender-based discrimination. They thereby pose formidable challenges to the achievement of the MDGs - in particular, Goals 4 (child health), 5 (maternal health) and 6 (combat HIV/AIDS).
MDG 4
Son preference can lead to the undernutrition of girls that is associated with increased risk of childhood illnesses and death.
MDG 5
Maternal morbidity and mortality is exacerbated by early marriage (and subsequent early and frequent childbirth), inadequate access to skilled birth attendants and sex-selective abortions.
MDG 6
Women's lower social status, often restrictive of movement outside of the household, negates timely access to health services. When women do not have free access to household resources there are delays in seeking life-saving health services. Fear of stigma or further marginalization by health workers, family members and the community that an HIV or tuberculosis diagnosis could bring have also been reported as factors that influence health-seeking behaviour among women. If such factors prohibit access to health services, women's health is jeopardized through lack of access to screening, detection and treatment programmes.