Gender, sexual and reproductive health, and social change in Africa

Abstract

There has never been a more urgent time to invest in research and evidence on gender and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in Africa than today. The region is experiencing sweeping social changes that connect with gender and SRHR in wide-ranging ways. Gender and SRHR lie firmly at the heart of shifting fertility, migration, morbidity, and mortality patterns in Africa. They intersect with several of the region’s emerging realities: new media and technology, climate change, telehealth, assisted reproductive technologies, current trends in development aid, rapid urbanization, surging humanitarian situations, rising inequality, crumbling health systems, and the unrelenting onslaught of old diseases and epidemics, and a new pandemic. For instance, emerging digital technologies have provided immense opportunities for Africa to tackle gendered inequities in public health and to advance SRHR, but they have also elevated the risks for gender-based violence (GBV) for some population groups and launched new vistas of audacious campaigns and attacks against reproductive rights, gender equality, and sexual and gender minorities in the region.