Achieving gender justice for global health equity: the Lancet Commission on gender and global health

Achieving gender justice in global health—which we define as encompassing the realisation of universal rights in relation to health equity and gender equality, while also addressing the drivers of gender-based discrimination and exclusion—would yield positive benefits for all people by improving health outcomes, reducing health inequities, and ensuring more inclusive and equitable global health workplaces and workforce governance. Despite these potential benefits, gender has become a divisive term, including in global health, and initiatives to bring about gender justice—as well as the very concept of gender itself—are actively contested by well funded groups that seek to obstruct progress towards gender justice.