During 2002, Rights and Humanity was commissioned by WHO to produce an aide mémoire for members of the Committee on the Elimination Discrimination Against Women (the Committee).This work identified for the first time the impact of discrimination on women’s health and explained how to use women’s rights to strengthen health policies. The Aide Mémoire was a companion publication to the Guidelines we had produced for WHO on using CEDAW to promote women’s health.

Legal Protection of Women’s Equality in Health Care
Recognising that discrimination against women remains a serious concern world-wide, in 1979 the UN adopted the adoption of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). This Convention addresses discrimination in all its manifestations, including in the health sector.

Article 12 provides:
“States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in the field of health care to ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women, access to health care services, including those related to family planning.”

Rights and Humanity used a life cycle approach, compiling the results of scientific research from around the world to demonstrate the negative consequences in every society of discrimination on the health of women from conception to the grave.

The Study was in three parts. Part One provided an overview of WHO’s gender policy and the Committee’s current interpretation of health-related articles of CEDAW. This was followed in Part Two by an analysis of some examples of discrimination within four categories:

• discrimination leading to women’s vulnerability to preventable morbidity and mortality throughout a woman’s life cycle
• discrimination in the field of health care services and research
• social stigma and discrimination on the grounds of infection, ill-health and disability
• compound vulnerability suffered as a result of discrimination on the ground of both sex and additional grounds (such as disability).

Part Three presented strategies to combat discrimination as a tool for improving women’s health, outlining the opportunities raised by CEDAW in this regard.

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