Our work on gender and health outcomes

Gender impacts health and wellbeing, influencing both our own individual behaviours – the risks we face, whether we seek health care – and how the health system responds when we need care and support.

Yet too many global health organisations continue to ignore the role of gender in their efforts to protect and promote people’s health. Our research shows that fewer than half of organisations define what they mean by gender. And the majority still do not disaggregate their programmatic data by sex. A focus on gender is often still equated to delivering services to women.

This not only wastes precious resources, but exacerbates inequalities in health outcomes among women, men, transgender and non-binary people. Unless organisations take a fully gender-responsive approach to transform harmful gender norms, global health will fail to tackle a root cause of poor health outcomes for everyone. 

At Global 50/50, we produce cutting-edge research and innovative data visualisations, with national and global partners, on how gender power relations influence health policy and health outcomes across populations – analysing policy content, disparities in disease burden, and the social and commercial determinants of health to drive more equitable global health policy and practice.

G5050 initiatives

• Gendered Health Pathways: Our groundbreaking new tool presents a holistic view of people’s health pathways for three of the world’s deadliest conditions: HIV, hypertension and diabetes. By revealing striking disparities across the life course, the tool helps to shed new light on how gender affects people’s health. Learn more here.
• The Lancet Commission on Gender and Global Health: Co-chaired by our co-CEO Sarah Hawkes, the Commission produced new research, evidence and recommendations to provide a practical roadmap for action to improve health and wellbeing for everyone. Its report examines how gender is actively contested within health systems, and how anti-gender movements and commercial interests entrench injustice. Learn more here.
• Sex, Gender and Covid-19 Data Tracker: Over the course of the pandemic, we gathered, analysed and published data disaggregated by sex and other characteristics on testing, vaccination, hospitalisation and death. Our Tracker became the world’s largest repository of sex-disaggregated data, used by multiple UN dashboards and covered widely in the national and global media. Learn more here.

Publications (selected)

• Sex-disaggregated data along the gendered health pathways: A review and analysis of global data on hypertension, diabetes, HIV, and AIDS. Feraldi A, Zarulli V, Buse K, Hawkes S, Chang AY. PLoS Med 2025.
• Gender and global health: going, going, but not gone. Hawkes S et al including Buse K. Lancet 2025.
• From flowers to menstrual-flow trackers: the corporatisation of women’s equality and wellbeing. Hawkes S, Kedia S, Odunga S, Dahal M. Lancet 2023.
• Sex-disaggregated data matters: tracking the impact of Covid-19 on the health of women and men. Hawkes S, Buse K, Tanaka S… Verma R. Econ Politica, 2022.
• Social justice: what’s in it for gender equality and health? Hawkes S, Gamlin J, Buse K. BMJ 2022.
• The Politics of Gender and Global Health. Hawkes S, Buse K. Oxford Handbook of Global Health Politics. Oxford University Press 2019.
• Gender, health and the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development. Manandhar M, Hawkes S, Buse K, Nosrati E, Magar V. Bulletin of the World Health Organization 2018.

Find additional publications here.

Why gender and global health

Gender inequality hurts everyone. Patriarchal norms and structures shape institutions, drive poor health outcomes for all populations, determine career pathways and narrow workplace norms. 

Although they interact with one another, gender and biological sex are different. Gender is not equivalent to women and girls, or men and boys, but encompasses people of all genders. It is socially constructed and influenced by laws, politics, policies, communities, families and individuals. It shapes how we behave, act and feel. 

The consequences of inaction on gender are grave: For example, a baby girl born in 2017 can expect to live 4 years more than a baby boy born on the same day. In some countries that life expectancy gap is 11.7 years or more. Men’s shorter life expectancies are driven, in part, by:

• their higher rates of consumption of tobacco and alcohol
• their likelihood of death from violence (including in peacetime)
• deaths from road injuries, and deaths by suicide.

Girls and women might live longer, but they suffer longer with chronic diseases. Pregnancy complications and unsafe abortions remain a significant cause of death in many settings, with one third of girls married before they are 18. Further, married women in 27 countries still require their husband’s consent before they can access contraceptives.

Bringing a gender lens to health work is essential. Doing so will reduce health inequities by uncovering and addressing gendered barriers, biases, and power imbalances that shape all people’s risks, access to care, and health outcomes.

For definitions of gender and equality-related terms terms, see our glossary.