Amongst the widespread devastation of Covid-19 exists a silent double pandemic - that on women.

Often the primary caregivers in community settings, and making up 85% of the nursing workforce, women have faced increased exposure to the virus transmission, along the physical and mental burden of dually caring for the sick, in addition to their domestic duties and child and elder-care responsibilities.

During Covid-19, we witnessed global spikes in teenage pregnancies and gender-based violence cases, and with an estimated 740 million women globally working in the informal economy, surges in unemployment disproportionately affecting women.

International Women’s Day (IWD) has long been seen as a chance to celebrate women’s significant achievements on the global stage. But this year, set against the backdrop of heightened gender inequities, we should leverage it to collectively advocate for tangible, systematic changes for women, as a sustainable movement that transcends the confines of a single day.

This year’s IWD campaign theme ‘#ChooseToChallenge’ calls on individuals to advocate for gender equity in their respective communities. Yet institutions must also recognize their social responsibility to promote equity and mainstream gender, both inwards - by taking a mirror to their own organizational structure - and outwards - by taking steps to initiate and contribute to, movements that promote women.

The University of Global Health Equity (UGHE), a global health sciences university based in Rwanda, is one organization committed to taking explicit steps to create equity within its community and globally.

Equity in health starts with equity in education, a concept immediately visible in UGHE’s student recruitment structure where women comprise 70% of its medical cohort and 100% of students receive needs-based financial support to study. 

This deliberate structure goes beyond the traditional process of shortlisting and selecting candidates, and takes into account social and cultural factors - like domestic responsibilities, early marriage and pregnancy, and financial barriers - that limit high-school girls’ access to further education.

UGHE addresses this by visiting all-girls schools across the country, introducing students to female role-models from its student and alumni network, taking entry-exam sites to all provinces, and providing immersive science days on campus to subvert ingrained gender norms that discourage girls from studying STEM.

These gender norms contribute to why women hold 70% of jobs in the health and social care workforce, but only 25% of leadership roles, and make up less than 30% of the world's researchers. Role models have significant influencing power in addressing gaps in female scientists, researchers and global health leaders, and strong mentorship programs help institutionalize this by fostering transfer of knowledge across diverse disciplines to support young women navigate the often-labyrinthine path to leadership.

Comprising of 67% and 92.5% female mentees and mentors, respectively, UGHE’s Center for Gender Equity (CGE)’s pioneering Mentorship Program focuses on providing actionable frameworks for successful mentoring that serve both parties; with mentors benefitting as much from the process as mentees.

Similarly, the path to gender equity ought to focus on strategically planned, actionable goals. Organizations with a self-professed gender agenda must look at their own internal structures, assess the ingrained gender bias, identify gaps in supportive networks and resources for women, and analyze the culture that may adversely affect women ascending into leadership roles. 

The CGE, whose purpose is to mainstream gender throughout UGHE, is taking action through a first-of-its-kind Gender and Diversity Inclusion audit, studying academic activities, student and community engagement and gender and diversity sensitivity in the organizational culture and practices.

The participatory audit mobilized a diverse task force and collected input from all genders and minority groups at every organizational level through Kinyarwanda and English self-assessment questionnaires, individual in-depth staff interviews and a quantitative review of institutional policies.

Today, there is simply no excuse not to make workplaces more inclusive to women. Nearly 70% of mothers with children under 18, and 64% of mothers with preschool-aged children are in the paid workforce, and yet the majority of workspaces around the world are not adapted to support new mothers, or agile working to help women balance childcare responsibilities with those at work.

UGHE’s inclusion of a mother’s room in Kigali and on its Butaro Campus provides a private, hygienic space for lactating mothers to breastfeed or pump and store breast milk. In line with the Rwandan government’s efforts to end period poverty, UGHE’s students who menstruate are provided with free sanitary pads.

Such explicit ‘gendered’ steps are necessary to overcome existing power dynamics and social norms that limit women’s participation. In Butaro, UGHE’s Department of Community Health & Social Medicine is creating formal frameworks to guarantee women’s voices are heard, and further ensures inclusion by providing oral and sign language translators during communal activities.

UGHE also mandates its contractors and service providers to have an 80% locally sourced, 50% female labor force. Upcoming initiatives such as carpentry programs and mobilizing funding to support small Butaro-based businesses affected by the pandemic, are all attached to quotas to guarantee female participation.

By taking deliberate, participatory steps to ensure a gender agenda in both internal operations and external activities, organizations can collectively shift the dial towards a more gender-equal world. Institutions like UGHE have a social responsibility to leverage their networks and influence to champion women as critical cornerstones to global health systems and, leverage the lessons from COVID-19, to take actionable steps for a more gender-equitable and inclusive world for all.

Tsion Yohannes, Chair of the Center for Gender Equity, Deborah Umucyo, Coordinator in the Center for Gender Equity, and Laura Wotton, Communications Manager, The University of Global Health Equity (UGHE).