Development as Gender Equity: Women's Advocacy and Cancer Control at the Pan-American Health Organization, 1980–2000

Abstract

Women's advocates’ strategies to influence international health agencies offer a new way to think about development. This article deals with the vibrant growth of women's health initiatives at the Pan-American Health Organization during Latin America's financially turbulent years from the 1980s through the 1990s. The multi-faceted nature of this process was especially apparent in the case of cervical cancer, the illness that launched the organization's cancer control programs. Archived reports and interviews with former officers show how the Pan-American Health Organization's approach to women's health broadened in this period to include new actors in response to demands of women's health advocates from Latin America. These advocates advanced the position that gender inequality played a fundamental role in placing women at risk for lethal and preventable illnesses. They also challenged international health agencies such as the Pan-American Health Organization to prioritize redressing those gendered inequalities as integral to development, rather than define the latter solely in terms of the improvement of economic conditions.