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Understanding Gender as a System
Episode 88 • 28th November 2025 • Connecting Citizens to Science • The SCL Agency
00:00:00 00:17:13

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In this first instalment of our two-part finale on gender justice, we explore the foundations needed to understand gender as a social system, one that shapes power, roles, resources and everyday experiences across different contexts.

Together with our guests, we look at how gender is embedded within social, economic and institutional structures. The episode examines what gets lost when gender is treated as a separate category, and why complexity, context and lived experience matter for anyone working across health, development or rights.

This conversation lays the groundwork for Part 2, where we look at how these insights translate into practice

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. She 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 programmes 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 centre 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 - Senior 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.

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Transcripts

Speaker:

Dr. Kim Ozano: Hello, and welcome to Connecting Citizens to Science.

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I am your host, Dr Kim Ozano, and this is a podcast where we explore

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global health and development.

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And today we're bringing you the first of a special two-part finale

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to our gender justice miniseries.

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When Ishrat and I worked together on the final episode with our guests today, we

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realised that there was a lot of content that needed to be shared, so we decided

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to make it a two-parter, so the theme that we're going to be exploring in

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both of the episodes is understanding gender as a complex social system,

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especially during times of crisis.

Rosemary Morgan:

When I talk about gender, I talk about it as a social

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system and ultimately how it impacts our health outcomes and health systems.

Rosemary Morgan:

Dr. Kim Ozano: Throughout this series, and again in today's discussion,

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it's been clear that gender isn't something separate from conflict

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pandemics, or economic instability.

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It is deeply woven throughout them, and when systems are under pressure, gender is

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often the first thing that is simplified, sidelined, or treated as an add-on, even

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though it shapes every part of our lives.

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In part one, we stay with the foundations.

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We explore what gender really means when we treat it as a social system,

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why it is layered, contextual, and dynamic, and how it interacts with

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power, identity, and lived experience.

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And then in part two, we move onto the practical elements, the approaches

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for working more responsibly and ethically for gender justice.

Rosemary Morgan:

So, before we begin, let me introduce our wonderful guests.

Rosemary Morgan:

We have Dr. Rosemary Morgan, who is an associate professor at the Department of

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International Health at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Rosemary Morgan:

She is recognised as a specialist in gender analysis in health and

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health systems research, and has published extensively in this field.

Rosemary Morgan:

We're also joined by Selima Sara Kabir.

Rosemary Morgan:

Selima is a transdisciplinary, mixed method researcher and educator based

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

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Her research spans gender health systems and policy, digital

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cultures and social justice.

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And of course, my wonderful co-host for this series, Ishrat Jahan, who

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is a research fellow at the Center of Gender and Sexual and Reproductive

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

Rosemary Morgan:

So, here is part one of our finale.

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Enjoy the episode.

Rosemary Morgan:

Ishrat, here we are coming to the end of this gender justice series.

Rosemary Morgan:

We've learned so much already, and after each of these episodes, I go

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away thinking so much more about gender and how I could apply it in my work.

Rosemary Morgan:

Perhaps you could set us up.

Rosemary Morgan:

What are we gonna be talking about today?

Ishrat Jahan:

Thank you, Kim.

Ishrat Jahan:

It's really nice to be here, and I'm excited for today because today we'll

Ishrat Jahan:

be talking about how we can think about gender research and actions moving

Ishrat Jahan:

forward in a world that's becoming increasingly defined by crisis.

Ishrat Jahan:

So I recently read a UN Women report that came in The Guardian that was saying

Ishrat Jahan:

that gender rights is facing stagnation and even regression in some contexts,

Ishrat Jahan:

and we can see the causes around us.

Ishrat Jahan:

There's increasing conflict, there's unprecedented aid cuts, and of course

Ishrat Jahan:

there are various kinds of national or global crisis like the pandemic.

Ishrat Jahan:

So, I think it's important for us to start off with asking our guests, how

Ishrat Jahan:

can we think about gender more deeply?

Ishrat Jahan:

And let's start with you, Rosemary.

Rosemary Morgan:

Thank you.

Rosemary Morgan:

I'm delighted to be here.

Rosemary Morgan:

One thing I've come to realise or learn is when you say the word

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gender, it means different things to different people, and this is

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often very context specific as well.

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Sometimes, when you say the word gender, people automatically

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think women and girls.

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It means women's rights, feminism, other times, particularly in some

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high-income countries, they think it means gender identity, particularly

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around transgender individuals and rights for transgender individuals.

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And that's a very big topic in the United States at the moment.

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Others think it's very binary that it's, you can either be only be a

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man or a woman and, and nothing else.

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None of these explanations on their own are correct.

Rosemary Morgan:

I mean, they're all part of understanding what, what gender is, but none

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of them on their own are correct.

Rosemary Morgan:

And when I talk about gender, I talk about it as a social system and ultimately

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how it impacts our health outcomes and health systems experience and outcomes.

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Thinking about how gender operates as a social system, for example, that's

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organised power roles, resources in society, how it operates on

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different levels, at the same time influencing how we organise our

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society in terms of social norms, institutions, structures at all levels.

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Families, households, communities, economies, states, it's like embedded

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in all of these different levels.

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And it also encompasses our interpersonal relationships, how

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we interact with one another, and also how it forms our individual

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identities and values, how we identify.

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It's different from, but related to, biological sex.

Rosemary Morgan:

Dr. Kim Ozano: what really stands out for me here is how gender is

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something that we live inside.

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It's not just a label or a category.

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It's a system of norms, expectations, and power that is

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shaping our everyday decisions.

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And if we don't see that system clearly, it becomes very hard to change it.

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It is socially constructed, meaning it's

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something that is negotiated by individuals and societies.

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What it means to be a man or a woman in one context is gonna be different from

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what it means to be in another context.

Rosemary Morgan:

It also changes over time, what it meant to be a man or a woman 50 years

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ago, very different from today, right.

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And then again, it changes across context.

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it also interacts with other social stratifiers or other social

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identities like race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability.

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So, my experiences as a white woman are gonna be very different from a, a

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black woman or Hispanic woman in the United States or Canada, for example.

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All of these dynamics affect our exposure to health risks, patterns of

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illness, distribution of health resource.

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And ultimately, I think it's really important that we think about

Rosemary Morgan:

gender as this social system and how it's sort of organised in society,

Rosemary Morgan:

how it impacts our identities, relationships, and the structures

Rosemary Morgan:

in which we live and work and exist.

Ishrat Jahan:

I think that's a really simplified yet, holistic way to put it.

Ishrat Jahan:

I think, what you're saying is that it's important to recognise the

Ishrat Jahan:

complexity of gender and gender as a system in itself, and then how

Ishrat Jahan:

it interacts with other systems.

Ishrat Jahan:

How power becomes shaped within it, and by it, to be able to understand

Ishrat Jahan:

it more deeply to begin with.

Rosemary Morgan:

And the one word that you really picked up on, I think is

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important, is the complexity of it.

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And I know we're gonna go to talk about sort of tools and and resources, how to

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explore it, but it's not straightforward.

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It's not an easy thing to integrate into our research monitoring

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evaluations, interventions.

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It really takes a sort of a systematic, holistic approach to be able to do it.

Ishrat Jahan:

Absolutely.

Ishrat Jahan:

I agree.

Ishrat Jahan:

Selima, how do you think of this idea of understanding

Ishrat Jahan:

gender as a system in itself?

Selima Kabir:

Thank you, Ishrat and thank you for having me as well.

Selima Kabir:

I think Rosemary's already put it really succinctly and really beautifully.

Selima Kabir:

Um, 'cause when I was thinking about the fact that gender is layered every

Selima Kabir:

time, we sort of start doing our work, and start thinking about gender

Selima Kabir:

discreetly, it becomes really difficult to think about gender outside of like

Selima Kabir:

the power structures and systems outside of all of these other identifiers.

Selima Kabir:

Again, thinking of gender as a system becomes really, really important

Selima Kabir:

because, as you know, I've done a lot of work around like health systems, um,

Selima Kabir:

community-based action, community-based research, and in that, oftentimes

Selima Kabir:

the way in which gender is looked at and understood is very siloed.

Selima Kabir:

It's like, 'Oh, well, AND women or, AND an X, Y, Z gender'.

Selima Kabir:

And that, that's just the sort of, it's a sort of like addendum, but every

Selima Kabir:

time we start looking at health systems more holistically, it becomes very

Selima Kabir:

evident that gender is embedded in every single layer of work that we try to do.

Selima Kabir:

And so, it becomes really important to think about that.

Selima Kabir:

And then, I think, intersectionality becomes really, really important because,

Selima Kabir:

when we think about the different identities that we embody and the

Selima Kabir:

different ways, especially in a country like Bangladesh, class becomes like a

Selima Kabir:

very key sort of determinant, making sure that we're looking at poverty and, uh,

Selima Kabir:

you know, like living outside of poverty.

Selima Kabir:

Even within those who are above the immediate poverty line, there's so

Selima Kabir:

many different layers to which their lived experiences impact the way in

Selima Kabir:

which they enact gender in the ways in which they're allowed to, you

Selima Kabir:

know, like in the ways in which they understand how they can live and act.

Selima Kabir:

And, as Rosemary was saying as well, it's very dynamic.

Selima Kabir:

It's, it's, it's so fluid and it's always changing.

Selima Kabir:

It's very much contextual.

Selima Kabir:

It's very based on so many different, like diverse factors that it's,

Selima Kabir:

it's really hard to pin down.

Selima Kabir:

So, I think, it's just remembering that gender is, is complex and is layered and

Selima Kabir:

it's situated in many different things.

Selima Kabir:

Dr. Kim Ozano: Selima, I really love this point about gender being

Selima Kabir:

layered and constantly shifting.

Selima Kabir:

It really echoes what we've heard throughout the series and how

Selima Kabir:

deeply context matters, and also how gender is always lived locally.

Selima Kabir:

It's shaped by place, identity and environments.

Ishrat Jahan:

I think we began with a sort of a trick question because

Ishrat Jahan:

there's no right answer to it, right?

Ishrat Jahan:

Because, um, I think what we often do is we don't appreciate the

Ishrat Jahan:

intricacy or the complexity of the systems within which we live.

Ishrat Jahan:

And, increasingly, there's a drive to simplify or to just, you know, flatten,

Ishrat Jahan:

so that we understand them better.

Ishrat Jahan:

And, at least in my limited experience as a researcher, as someone who's

Ishrat Jahan:

interacted with communities, oftentimes, it's easier for the kinds of evaluation

Ishrat Jahan:

tools we have or the research tools we have, if we can categorise or put things

Ishrat Jahan:

into boxes and make it very simple for our reports in our donor agenda.

Ishrat Jahan:

Dr. Kim Ozano: The complexities for me, I sound almost a bit unwieldy.

Ishrat Jahan:

They're, they're large and complex and there's so many, you know, Rosemary

Ishrat Jahan:

and Selima, as you were talking, all these frameworks that I've come

Ishrat Jahan:

across have popped in my head and I think, let's go back to the basics.

Ishrat Jahan:

And we're hearing that gender is often an add-on rather than

Ishrat Jahan:

something that's considered.

Ishrat Jahan:

And as soon as we get into crisis, it ends up being pushed aside.

Ishrat Jahan:

So, I guess the question to both of you is how can we make sure that gender's

Ishrat Jahan:

not just an add-on, that it's thought about in all the work we do; from our

Ishrat Jahan:

projects and donors right down to the communities that we work with directly.

Rosemary Morgan:

I think it's very true that gender is often treated as an add-on.

Rosemary Morgan:

You see it as sort of an additional separate question as opposed to something

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that is integrated across questions.

Rosemary Morgan:

And I, I think in order to make sure it is integrated in, in all of our

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work and everything that we do, we do need to take both sort of a gender

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mainstreaming approach and sort of gender integration of approach.

Rosemary Morgan:

So, gender mainstreaming is thinking about how do we establish it or integrate it

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into our own organisations, institutions, our own practices through, you know,

Rosemary Morgan:

making sure we have established policies or gender policies in our organisation.

Rosemary Morgan:

Making sure we have policies like sexual harassment policies, right?

Rosemary Morgan:

It's, it's, or equitable opportunities, equitable pay.

Rosemary Morgan:

I think of gender mainstreaming a lot as practising what we preach.

Rosemary Morgan:

So how do we turn the lens inwards on what we are doing?

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And then gender mainstreaming creates an enabling environment for gender

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integration, which is integrating gender into our programmes, interventions,

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research, and there's different strategies and tools to do that.

Rosemary Morgan:

Then we often use, sort of, frameworks and tools to do that in a very systematic way.

Rosemary Morgan:

I've heard a lot that in the past that, you know, in order to take a gender

Rosemary Morgan:

lens to our work, especially research or monitoring and evaluation, as all you need

Rosemary Morgan:

to do is desegregate your data by sex.

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And that is not true, because a lot of work we do doesn't include men and women.

Rosemary Morgan:

Sometimes it just includes women, sometimes it just includes men.

Rosemary Morgan:

So we, we've done a lot of work of thinking about what is gender data,

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how do we actually capture this and measure it, particularly in our MAGE

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project, which stands for Monitoring and Action for Gender and Equity, which

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is a partnership between Johns Hopkins University and the Global Financing

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Facility, which is part of the World Bank.

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So, we've looked at established frameworks and thought, okay, what is gender data?

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How do we break it down into, for example, sex specific data, which captures just

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data from one gender group only, like men or women, sex desegregated data, which

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compares things between men and women.

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Well, and while these data points are important, they're not enough

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to constitute gender analysis.

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They're an entry point.

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Dr. Kim Ozano: This really resonates with so many projects in global health,

Rosemary Morgan:

the way our tools often push us to simplify things in order to measure them.

Rosemary Morgan:

But what you're both saying is those simplifications can hide the very

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dynamics that we're trying to understand.

Rosemary Morgan:

Yeah, thinking about how then do we integrate a needs, rights,

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and preferences lens into this needs, what are essential needs for particular

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gender groups like women or men?

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What rights, what do they have an essential right to and preferences?

Rosemary Morgan:

What do they prefer?

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And these are gonna be very context specific, which is why

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we need frameworks and tools.

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There's another gender dimension, which is thinking about gender equality and systems

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indicators, and all of these overlap.

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So, gender equality and systems data or indicators thinks about how

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gender power relations manifest as inequities, and then how might that

Rosemary Morgan:

affect the work that we do, right?

Rosemary Morgan:

So it, they might manifest as inequitable access to resources, which could be a

Rosemary Morgan:

lot of different things, finances, time, education, information, knowledge, um,

Rosemary Morgan:

inequitable roles and practices and distribution of labour, inequitable

Rosemary Morgan:

norms, beliefs, values, and decision making power, autonomy, and, and sort

Rosemary Morgan:

of rules, both formal and informal.

Rosemary Morgan:

And this by, by taking sort of systemic lens like this, we can think about how do

Rosemary Morgan:

we make our work more gender responsive?

Rosemary Morgan:

How do we move from being gender sensitive, where we're just considering

Rosemary Morgan:

gender but not doing anything about it, to gender specific or gender accommodative

Rosemary Morgan:

where we're actually thinking about how do gender inequities, or how might

Rosemary Morgan:

they affect our work, and how do we modify our work to make sure they

Rosemary Morgan:

don't so we can achieve our objectives?

Rosemary Morgan:

And then gender transformative.

Rosemary Morgan:

How do we challenge and change harmful gender norms, roles and relations?

Rosemary Morgan:

So, we do really need to use established frameworks and tools to

Rosemary Morgan:

be able to do this in, in our work.

Rosemary Morgan:

Dr. Kim Ozano: And that brings us to the end of part one of our two-part finale.

Rosemary Morgan:

And today we've stayed with the foundation.

Rosemary Morgan:

We really took the time to understand gender as a complex

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social system and explored how those dynamics become visible.

Rosemary Morgan:

In part two, we're going to build on everything that you've heard so

Rosemary Morgan:

far and move into the practical.

Rosemary Morgan:

We're gonna be talking about the approaches that can really help us to

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work more responsibly, more ethically, and more effectively with our communities.

Rosemary Morgan:

It's a continuation of the conversation that you've heard today, but with a focus

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on action, and it's a really powerful companion to what we've explored today.

Rosemary Morgan:

But for now, thank you for listening and thank you to our guests

Rosemary Morgan:

for sharing such rich insights.

Rosemary Morgan:

And do join us in part two.

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