Health communication campaigns can fail to achieve their objective, or even worsen health disparities, if they do not consider gender and other identities as an underlying principle of society and how it affects health care. Language and visual representations can perpetuate biases and stereotypes and reinforce inequities and that’s why there is a need to promote gender transformative approaches empowering health language and imagery. Communicators often overlooked gender-based behaviors with regard to social media use, information seeking, different health-related needs, perceived risks, experiences and gender roles what can end in worst health outcomes, especially in women. When women and gender minorities do not see their experiences, worries or lives reflected in health communications, the message is not effective, they do not benefit and frequently turn to other harmful alternatives.
Sexism is common in women´s health campaigns with messages encouraging women to be young, slim, and feminine. Designers mostly view women from a male perspective or talk about diseases that affect women in a laddishly jokey way. The campaign “Don´t keep them crossed, get screened instead” to highlight the importance of smear tests to prevent cervical cancer is a good example of sexualization of a medical procedure and is offensive in its own right. The crossing and uncrossing of a woman’s legs is a well known metaphor for sexual continence or incontinence. Girls are taught that it’s ladylike to sit your legs crossed as a sense of good taste, modesty and chastity. Furthermore, why men are not included in these messages? Their health is also affected by sexually transmitted diseases and they are also reservoirs and source of infection for their partners.
Health communications ensuring gender balance across images representing women, men and non-binary people in a full range of roles and positions and depicting them in non-traditional roles are crucial to mitigate these biases. Moreover, considering representations of women’s bodies including posture, expressions, gestures, positioning and clothing must be taken in account to de-bias global health.
In conclusion, in effective health campaigns assessing the degree to which images are gender stereotypical or non-stereotypical and ensuring gender-sensitive and neutral language is the key to foster real transformation.
The Gender Transformative Communication is an useful toolkit that aims to: a) Make gender visible: knowledge production, new narratives; b) Pay attention to intersectional elements and global North-South relations; c) Actively resisting gender-negative messaging, and transforming existing narratives.
Professor of Medical Microbiology at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), director of the Laboratory of Antibiotics and Molecular Bacteriology.