Interventions linking gender relations and violence with reproductive health and HIV: rationale, effectiveness and gaps

Feminist-inspired scholarship has shown gender as being not naturally given, but as derived from the society in which individuals live. It involves a society’s use of biological differences as the starting point to define what it means to be male and female. In societies characterised by male dominance (patriarchy), gender is an expression of political power that enshrines rigid stratification of gender relations to ensure the political domination by men and the subordination of women. However, all men are not necessarily equally powerful politically and socially, because gender traverses with other social stratifications based on race, class, religion, ethnicity, age and sexuality which determine an individual’s social status and political power or the lack thereof (Horrocks, 1994). Numerous studies have shown that social constructions of masculinity and femininity that are stratified in a hierarchical order have many negative implications on relations between men and women and on their sexual and reproductive health (SRH), wellbeing and rights.