This commentary brings together theory, evidence, and lessons from 15 years of gender and human resources for health (HRH) analyses conducted in health systems in six World Health Organization (WHO) regions to address selected data-related aspects of WHO’s 2016 Global HRH Strategy and 2022 Working for Health Action Plan. It considers useful theoretical lenses, multi-country evidence, and implications for implementation and HRH policy.

Female Community Health Workers (CHWs) are often preferred because they can more easily access mothers and children. At the same time, gender norms are at the heart of many of the challenges and inequities that these workers encounter. This article explores how these gender roles and a lack of formal worker protections leave CHWs vulnerable to violence and sexual harassment, common occurrences that are frequently downplayed or silenced.

Supportive supervision (SS) focuses on improving the supervisor-provider relationship to set performance objectives and expectations, monitor performance and provide feedback, address training and professional development needs, solve problems, and motivate and support providers to improve productivity. This technical brief provides a theoretical framework that brings together SS as a critically important mechanism for improving the health workplace environment and service delivery, and gender analysis as a tool to illuminate human relationships, power dynamics, and norms.

Female health workers in Senegal juggle full-time jobs—often to posts far from home--and family duties. These responsibilities can exacerbate interpersonal and family conflict and negatively impact the services they provide to their clients. The Senegal Ministry of Health and Social Affairs recognizes the need to be more responsive to gender inequality, including violence and discrimination, in the workplace, and aims to integrate gender equality in the health sector’s human resources management.