Global organisations that specialise in sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) are neglecting the wellbeing of their own female staff, according to a damning new report.
The Global Health 50/50 campaign, which works for gender equality in global health, found that only one of 197 organisations it studied had workplace policies for menstruation, menopause or abortion.
The report, published on Wednesday, said 29 of the organisations allowed women to use their sick leave for reproductive needs and called for alternatives to women having to use sick leave.
“The findings are damning. Despite being in the 21st century, gender discrimination continues to be perpetuated in all areas of life for women,” said Prof Sarah Hawkes, the initiative’s co-founder.
“Using sick leave [for periods and menopause] makes it seem like a sickness, but also if you use up your sick leave on regular parts of being female then you have little time for other sicknesses,” she added.
Hawkes said the lack of policies to cater for SRHR “makes you question whether organisations are really set up to have women in the workplace”.
The report highlighted that only 18 organisations provided full maternal health benefits to staff who had suffered a miscarriage or stillbirth. It also said there was a lack of domestic violence policies, with just 21 organisations having policies in place to support their employees.
“As a community, organisations active in global health have a duty to uphold women’s sexual and reproductive rights in all their forms. As a sector, they are fighting for women across the globe to have access to these fundamental human rights, yet do not seem to apply the same standards in their own back yard,” Hawkes said.
Helen Clark, the former prime minister of New Zealand who sits on the advisory board of Global Health 50/50, said the lack of policies highlighted how taboos around sexual and reproductive health were deeply rooted in society.
“Suffering from agonising period pains? Take sick leave. Mentally and physically drained by the effects of menstruation? Take sick leave. Going through the indescribable pain and grief of suffering a miscarriage? Take sick leave. Got the flu? Also take sick leave,” Clark said.
“We are inflating the stigma by positioning these life events as illnesses, and penalising women for what is completely natural.”
The report, which called for more leadership from global health organisations, more legal action was needed to guarantee SRHR, but this had been made more difficult amid a “global backslide” and a “rising, well-funded and active opposition to goals of gender equality”.
Lynda Gilby, a global health researcher who has studied the opposition to SRHR, said this opposition involved well-funded lobbying groups but also several countries, including Russia, that veto any mention of sexual and reproductive health in UN negotiations.
“What’s really frustrating is how SRHR has become so politicised, because it’s a health service and it’s a right to health services, which is actually enshrined in international laws and agreements, but opposition actors turn it into a culture war,” said Gilby.
She said this translated into women dying because they could not access life-saving abortion services or treatment for miscarriages.
“This is really part of an increasingly, global hostile movement,” Gilby said. “We really do need to bring people together from academia, civil society and policymakers to strategise, to get the funding to push back on this because the resulting impacts are on health and lives.”
