In this second part of our two-part finale on gender justice, the focus shifts from understanding gender as a system to what it means to act on that understanding in practice.

Building on Part 1, the conversation explores how to move beyond gender awareness towards more gender-responsive and gender-transformative approaches. Our guests reflect on the role of power, intersectionality and context, and why frameworks, participation and reflexivity matter for ethical and effective work.

The episode reflects on the practical challenges of applying gender frameworks in real-world settings, including how language, framing and collaboration shape what is possible in different contexts. We close by emphasising the importance of connecting gender across research agendas and movements, particularly in a world shaped by overlapping crises.

In this episode:

Ishrat Jahan - Research Fellow at the Centre for Gender and Sexual and Reproductive Health at BRAC James P. Grant School of Public Health in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Ishrat’s research focuses on the intersection of gender, health, and environmental issues. Ishrat is involved in national and international projects exploring the impact of climate change on women’s health, adaptive practices in marginalised communities, and Global South-led curricula in higher education.

Dr Rosemary Morgan - Associate Professor, Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Dr. Morgan is recognised as a specialist in gender analysis in health and health systems research, interventions, and programs and has published 90 peer-reviewed journal articles. With a focus on women’s health and wellbeing, her research explores methods for gender analysis and examines how gender inequities influence health outcomes and health systems, using qualitative approaches to center lived experiences and challenge structural inequalities. Dr. Morgan co-directs the Gender and Health Summer Institute and coordinates the Gender and Health Certificate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Selima Sara Kabir - Sr Research Associate, BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health

Selima is a transdisciplinary, mixed-methods researcher and educator. She holds an MPH from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and her research lies at the intersections of gender, health systems and policy, digital cultures, and social justice. Since 2019, she has led and contributed to interdisciplinary projects exploring relationships, care, and health equity in low- and middle-income country contexts to Global South-led scholarship on gender and transformation.

Useful links:

• Understanding Gender as a System Part 1
• Art and Activism for Gender Justice
• Disability and Gender Justice
• Allyship in Gender Justice
• Gender Backlash and the Erosion of Everyday Rights
• Tackling Gender Backlash During Crises
• Gender and Equity ensuring women, and children survive.
• Countering Backlash - Reclaiming Gender Justice

Want to hear more podcasts like this?

Follow Connecting Citizens to Science on your usual podcast platform or YouTube to hear more about current research and debates within global health and development.

The podcast cuts across disciplines, including health systems strengthening, gender and intersectionality, tropical diseases (NTDs, TB, Malaria), maternal and child healthcare (antenatal and postnatal care), mental health and wellbeing, vector-borne diseases, climate change and co-production approaches.

If you would like your project or programme to feature in an episode or miniseries, get in touch with the producers of Connecting Citizens to Science, the SCL Agency.

Dr. Kim Ozano: Hello listeners, I'm pleased to welcome you back

to Connecting Citizens to Science.

I'm your host, Dr. Kim Ozano, and this is a podcast where we explore

global health and development.

So, today is the second part of our gender justice finale, and the last

episode in the miniseries, Backlash Resistance and the Path to Gender Justice.

Over the last six episodes, we've covered so much ground.

We've talked about gender and how it is played out in different

contexts, and for different people.

We've looked at concepts, theories, and examined gender as a system.

If you haven't already listened to those episodes, do revisit them.

They are educational, thought provoking, and really help you to

extend your thinking about gender inequalities and gender injustice.

In this last episode, we're starting to move from understanding and

conceptual thinking to action.

It becomes really important to talk to people and understand

how are they understanding gender?

Dr. Kim Ozano: So, today we're gonna be talking to our guests about the practical

side of gender responsive work, the tools, the frameworks, the approaches

that can help us to respond ethically, thoughtfully, and effectively to the

realities that we heard about in part one.

And to help us do that, again, we're joined by Dr Rosemary Morgan, who is an

associate professor at the Department of International Health at John Hopkins

Bloomberg School of Public Health.

We're also joined by Selima Sara Kabir, who is a researcher and

educator at the BRAC James P. Grant School of Public Health in Bangladesh.

And as always, I have the pleasure of being joined by Ishrat Jahan,

who has been an insightful co-host throughout this series.

Ishrat is a research fellow at the Center for Gender and Sexual and Reproductive

Health, at BRAC James P. Grant School of Public Health in Dakar, Bangladesh.

Enjoy the episode.

We ended the last episode with Rosemary raising some really important points.

She talked about the difference between being gender sensitive,

where we acknowledge gender, but we don't necessarily act on it.

And moving towards a more intentional approach.

So, something that we would think about in terms of being more gender

responsive or gender specific work.

And that is where we actively think about how gender inequities might shape

people's experiences and outcomes and how we adapt our work to address some of them.

And then there's that one step further gender transformative work, and that

asks how we actively challenge and change harmful gender norms, gender

roles, or power relations, rather than just working around them.

So what really came through strongly in the last episode, is that

this doesn't happen by accident.

It requires us to use established frameworks and tools and to be deliberate

about how we apply them in practice.

So, with this in mind, over to you, Ishrat.

Thank you.

Those are really important points that I think often does not get discussed enough,

especially when we need to be having more conversations about mainstreaming gender.

Selima, what are your thoughts on that as someone who researches directly with

local communities, and you come across how gender is maybe in one way or the

other, embedded in their everyday?

I'm a big advocate for qualitative data,

for rich ethnographic data.

And a lot of the work that we do is around that.

And I think there needs to be a greater synergy in the work that we do in terms of

the big data, the sort of like data sets.

Those are really important because they give us a really holistic kind of view of

where we are at in the world right now.

But then when we're thinking about gender and when we're the way we've

been talking about gender, which is, it's so deeply contextually, it's

so deeply tied to lived experiences.

It then becomes really important to ensure that we're also bringing out

actual voices, not only amplifying, but actually bringing out the

voices of the communities, the people that we're working with.

And I think one of the ways in which we found it to be really empowering

is making sure that the work that we do directly involves communities,

allows them to be involved in the ways in which we're asking the questions.

Understanding what kind of language they're using in terms of framing.

Because a lot of the time when we're framing questions for research, we

come at it from such an academic and almost like jargon heavy lens.

And then when we go to the communities, and we validate these tools, we find

out that, the ways in which we're framing these big ideas around gender

sensitisation actually comes down to very basic, very day-to-day daily things.

And it becomes really important to talk to people and understand

how are they understanding gender?

And that is something that I'm such a big advocate for right now we're working

on a project around community health workers in Bangladesh and we've been

working around their mental wellbeing.

And when we go into the field and we start talking to them about their

lived experiences, their mental wellbeing it becomes very apparent

that you cannot extricate the gender from this because they're having to

juggle their families, their homes, as well as their responsibilities

as community health workers.

And then in the work that they're doing, they're faced with different forms of

harassment on the streets that the male, their male counterparts are not privy to.

And so, in every step of the work that they do, it becomes apparent that it's

only when you start talking to people that you realise that it is embedded.

And it, that conversation doesn't feel so complex anymore because you're doing that.

It's coming out through the conversation.

But I think it's important to have that reflective lens.

Make sure that you're learning as much from the community as you are, trying

to get information out from them.

If we start thinking about it in terms of like, how does it impact me daily

and how does it impact you daily?

It can become a little bit simpler and a little bit easier to embed

that gender lens into your everyday thinking and everyday work.

We do need to think about other active approaches for increasing

gender responsiveness, and Selima has really touched upon one of the important

ones, which is meaningful participation and representation, particularly of

the communities in which we work with.

Communities can be anything from the health workers in the local facility

to community health workers, to people who live and work in, in, in the area.

Other active approaches, and we've mentioned this already,

is making sure you're bringing in that intersectional lens.

I always say if you're not bringing an intersectional lens into your

work, you're doing the gender analysis unethically, because of what

we're doing is actually privileging those with already very privileged

identities, where we are bringing their lived experiences to the forefront.

So, we must think about how gender intersects with other social identities.

And the last one is just making sure we're really taking a context specific approach.

Because, as Selima mentioned, how one community thinks about gender

is gonna be different from another.

So, we can't take work from one context and just implement it in another.

We have to do the meaningful, on the ground, sometimes bottom up

approach, to this work to make sure we're really bringing in

that context specific approach.

Dr. Kim Ozano: And I think Rosemary, one of the things is it goes

so much beyond those numbers to needs, rights, and preferences.

And the only way you can find that out is to talk to people.

And Selima's given us a great example that this comes through

conversations, everyday conversations.

Selima, I was wondering, when you have these conversations, it seems almost when

you talk that gender comes out naturally.

As a researcher, do you have to go in there with a gender agenda and kind of

create that consciousness of the gender surroundings, or is it as organic as you

make it sound, or does it always change?

That's a really interesting question.

I hadn't really thought of it that way.

I think as a researcher, you need to bring some gender consciousness with you.

You need to be aware of these intersecting identities, the ways in which they

intersect and how gender may play a role.

But I think if you've got that in the back of your mind, that, okay, who

you know, everyday things like who's doing the cooking, who's doing the

shopping, who's doing the child rearing?

These are all gender frameworks in a sense, right?

And as long as you've got that in the back of your mind when you're talking to the

communities, it comes out quite naturally.

Like women are very much aware of the ways in which they're negotiating,

navigating through patriarchy.

Every woman you meet, whether it's like, very privileged woman in a western

country or a rural community health worker, they're aware of the ways in

which they're having to navigate the spaces that, you know, they're living in.

And if you go in with a gender lens, you're able to pick out

what they're saying and the ways that they're saying it.

Dr. Kim Ozano: I think the other thing about participatory methods and

reflexivity links to the concept of power and how power fits within this

whole framework and is quite central.

Power is absolutely central and cross-cutting.

When we're thinking about these frameworks, we really need to think about

how these different gender domains or the ways in which gender power relations

manifest as inequities interrelate, right?

Because they all affect each other.

And some, I like to say some are a bit more upstream versus downstream.

Things like norms, what's appropriate for men and women, boys and girls,

or gender minority individuals.

Also decision making power autonomy.

Just the power is embedded in our systems and structures.

That's going to impact individual's own personal autonomy.

It's gonna, impact our access to resources.

It's gonna impact roles and practices.

So, we really do need to think about how power is embedded.

We need to think about how power shapes, discrimination, disadvantage,

privilege, and advantage.

And that's why that intersectional lens comes in thinking about different

systems and structures of oppression, like sexism, racism, heterosexism,

ableism, all the 'isms, right?

And how are they shaping our own individual lived experience?

And it, I think what a lot of people don't do in gender work is

they don't go that step further.

They often just, they do the sex desegregated data or they, they think

about how men and women are affected differently, but they don't then link

it to different systems and structures of oppression or even the gender system

itself as a system and structure that privileges one group over another.

It's often a political action to make that linkage . And that's where

that backlash sometimes comes in is when you're making that link.

And a lot of us, we need to push ourselves to make sure that

we're going that extra step.

Questioning these systems feels like something that's, that's a

lot more complicated than it should be.

Because these systems exist and they're meant to serve people in

communities, but ultimately, what they end up doing is people in

communities end up serving the systems.

And so power becomes a very important and critical structure, especially when you

talk to very marginalised, very vulnerable groups because you can really see the

ways in which different intersecting power systems, some of which, even I

benefit from, are impacting the ways in which they're living their lives.

So, I think power is a really critical kind of area to consider when we're

talking about gender, and that's something that you absolutely cannot leave out.

I think one thing that I draw from what both Rosemary, you,

and Selima said is, is the idea of, of researching upwards because there's a

lot of our research, gender and beyond, when we think about communities, if you

look at society as a hierarchical thing, we look where the communities are in

the bottom and that's where we focus on.

So, power structures, that Selima, you say are sitting heavily on us, I like to think

that they're invisible, and oftentimes we aren't thinking about them because they're

basically the water we are living in.

Yeah to reflect on something you said Ishrat is,

how thinking about power and that often people don't see it 'cause

it's part of our lived experiences.

So, I think that using these gender tools and lenses intersectionality can

really helps to not only shine a light on disadvantage and discrimination,

but also power and privilege, and how that's also impacting people's

lived experiences or health outcomes.

And then going to practical tools, or practical approaches, I think this

is really important in gender work.

First, really to think about who our audiences are and making sure

that we have the most appropriate messaging for the audience.

And this also links to potential backlash because, you don't

want to turn people away.

You don't wanna automatically close doors.

And sometimes that means not using the word gender at

all in our messaging, right?

Sometimes that means saying women and girls, even though we know

gender is much broader than that.

Sometimes, that means that we need to make the business case for gender.

So, a lot of people who work in this space use rights space arguments, and I

am so very much in support of those, as I absolutely believe that, that we need to

do this 'cause it's the right thing to do.

But people don't buy those... A lot of people do not buy those arguments.

So, making the business case me really means demonstrating why addressing gender

inequalities and inequities is not only a moral or human rights imperative, and

sometimes we don't even use that language, but also strategic and practical for

organisations, governments, or programmes.

For example, showing how gender equality improves outcomes.

How when we address the health of women and girls, how it can

improve efficiency and effectiveness of our interventions, right?

Because often, if we're not thinking about how gender power relations

manifest as inequities, they can impede our programming and we're

not able to meet our objectives.

How?

How it can be a form of risk management, particularly because when we don't

bring in a gender lens, it could lead to harmful consequences for the

individuals in which we're working with.

So, what we want to do is we wanna do like a harm reduction, right?

We wanna make sure that our organisations aren't perpetuating harm.

And then also, of course, how does it lead to evidence-based benefits

in our work, not only, again, gender mainstreaming, turning the lens inwards,

making sure we have equitable teams or like men and women on our teams.

Thinking about women in leadership positions, how does that lead to

more diverse decision making, more evidence-based decision making?

And then often these are the arguments that we have to make, even if they

go against our all very like moral fibre of what we think is right.

But if we wanna get it done, I think we do need to think about how do we

make the business case, how do we use the appropriate language when

we're communicating to individuals?

And then another practical approach is building collaborations and

networks with organisations on the ground, with advocacy groups, right?

With organisations that have different forms of power.

Because I think we are stronger when we work together, both as

individuals and organisations.

And that's such an important thing to do when we're addressing something

as ubiquitous as gender inequality.

I think, I was thinking about it within the Bangladeshi context,

and I was thinking the business case in the Bangladeshi context is often taking

on, or adoption of, religious language and using that framing sometimes as well.

In a lot of work we do, it's becoming more and more common is engaging

religious leaders and like local leaders into the conversations as

well, because, it's very much that same thing of making that business case

just from the, like the person that you're pitching to is different and

you're just catering to your audience.

But like within communities, these local leaders and these religious

leaders hold so much power.

We talk about how important it's to engage to the husband when we're talking to

women, in rural communities especially.

So oftentimes, you know, when we take a gender approach, we're thinking we

have to target these women and we have to give them all of these information,

and we have to do it in this really sterilised way, so that they can get

all of the information they need and they can, live their lives better.

But we don't recognise that again, they're also living in this sort of very

embedded system with different people around them, different people that

they have to live with and navigate.

And we can go away after we've given our message, but they have to

live with the consequences of it.

And so it becomes very important to engage everybody else around

the people that we're working with.

And I don't want to reduce gender to women, but like women or any other

groups that we're working with the people around them and understanding

their viewpoints as well, and trying to come at it with a very balanced

approach I think is very important.

Dr. Kim Ozano: I love this.

A real great point to end; the people that you work with are living

in the social system of gender and understanding and thinking about

everybody in that social system is is the only way and a practical way.

So Ishrat those final points are so large.

I'll leave it to you to wrap up.

That's a big task.

Thanks for that.

But yeah, I think those are really great points and thank you so much Rosemary and

Selima for amazing insights on how we can think of gender with all its complexities.

I think a point that I would like to add, and it's taking away from both

what Rosemary and Selima said, is that oftentimes as researchers, or at least I

have found myself doing this, that even as a researcher, I tend to just look at

gender and not connect it to other issues.

So, we had started out this discussion talking about crisis

conditions and living in a world where increasingly it's becoming more

unpredictable and more complicated.

And one takeaway that I have had over the length of this podcast at least, is

that it's very important to collaborate and develop connections across

movements and across a research agenda.

So, you cannot, for example, be doing climate research without having gender

as a very deep embedded component of it.

So, I think that's a note that I would like to end on.

Dr. Kim Ozano: Thank you Ishrat, as ever a wonderful take home.

It's about thinking about gender and connecting across movements and agendas

and thinking about mainstreaming gender and everything we do.

Using those frameworks in a practical, sensible way that can move gender

forward and resist the backlash that we're experiencing every day and are

seeing in the news in our everyday lives.

So, it's been a privilege to be able to host this this six part miniseries on

gender justice and I've learned a lot.

And to our listeners, check out the other five episodes.

Each time, I can promise you when you leave, you will be doing a lot of thinking

as about your lives and your work.

Thank you to our wonderful guests today for making me think harder again, and

Ishrat what a great co-host you've been.

That brings us to the end of this gender justice miniseries, Backlash

Resistance in the Path to Gender Justice.

Our guests have shown just how interconnected gender, power, context,

and crisis really are and how important it is that we don't treat gender

as an add-on, but that as something that is central to the way we design,

deliver, and evaluate our work.

A huge thank you to Rosemary Morgan and Selima Sara Kabir for their

depth, clarity, and generosity throughout this conversation.

And to you listeners, thank you for joining us for this two part finale.

If you're only just joining the conversation, do go back and

listen to the other 6 episodes.

So, it's from this miniseries.

We cover everything from allyship and solidarity, to navigating backlash, to

lived experiences of gender inequities and inequalities, to co-creating change

with communities across the globe.

I hope it leaves you thinking differently, acting differently, and

expanding your own work and horizons.

Until next time, stay connected.