Women are rarely consulted and listened to on their experiences of health service, and their assessment of service quality. Furthermore, women’s feedback is not solicited regularly through systematic research.
ARROW’s regional six-country action research on “Women’s Access to Quality Gender-sensitive Services”, found that this was the first time in each study site, that women clients participated in qualitative research. In China, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines and Sri Lanka, this research was the first of its kind nationally. This is surprising, as the Beijing Platform for Action strongly asserts that health programmes need to be designed and implemented in cooperation with women, and asks governments to “redesign health information services and training for health workers so that they are gender-sensitive and reflect the user’s perspectives”.
