The UN views access to healthcare for women as being vital to their life and their ability to participate in all areas of public and private life.

The UN has recognised the impact of gender inequality on health since at least 1979 when CEDAW was ratified by member states and again in 1995 at the World Conference on Women in Beijing as well as other global meetings such as the International conference of Population and Development in Cairo, 1994.

Most significantly, the World Health Organisation officially recognised the importance of address gender based health awareness in 1998, when the Health for All in the 21st Century programme included "Health Equity" as the first among its "Global Health Targets". Gender was one of the equality targets amongst others such as race.

In 2002, WHO passed its first Gender Policy, acknowledging gender as an issue important in its own right. At about the same time, WHO, like most UN organizations, as well as many governments, nonprofit organizations, and foundations, began using the UN's Millennium Declaration.

The goals of the Millennium Declaration, too, go beyond the Health for All framework's focus on general equality, specifying more particularly that gender equality and the empowerment of women are vital goals. Gender and gender relations, then, have become a specific issue both at WHO and at other UN institutions. Indeed, the WHO Gender Policy mandates that all WHO programmes should review and reflect gender awareness in all aspects of its work, be it in health policy or in the practical implementation of its work including its analysis and the way in which it carries out treatments.

To this end the United Nations has endorsed a framework of global and national indicators to monitor and implement gender equality raising issues in the health field. Among the indicators included are households' burdens on payment for healthcare, contraceptive and reproductive healthcare coverage and quality of healthcare.

The most difficult task however for the UN is bridging the gap between gender health awareness in some regions, notably Europe and the Anglophone 'new' world and that of the developing world. More importantly this is a matter of resources. Particularly as gender health awareness has progressed in many instances independently of the UN in the developed world through national voluntary sector campaigns ahead of the developing nations. For example, women's health groups in Europe have promoted gender health awareness and indeed are a beacon for UN policy. Countries such as the United Kingdom, France and Germany are examples of these. On the other hand, it is wrong to assume that Europe is an even region. The South Eastern states, such as Serbia and Montenegro are less able to independently promote and provide for gender health.

Therefore a greater reliance is placed on the WHO policy in countries with a deficit of domestic resources whereas in other regions WHO policy remains as a form of guideline. While this may indicate faster progression into gender awareness in health it also means that policy developed with national and regional indicators is not uniformly applied. This is particularly so where countries adopt a notion of gender blindness in healthcare rather than gender awareness. An example of this is in the common law jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom where there is no specific gender based legislation to implement positive healthcare goals for women.

Analysis provided by: Soraya Pascoe, Legal Expert on Gender.