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  • Title: Technology and women's health in developing countries.
    Author: MacCormack CP.
    Journal: Int J Health Serv; 1989; 19(4):681-92. PubMed ID: 2684870.
    Abstract:
    In developing countries is medical technology transfer reaching women? Do women control new technologies or are they only passive recipients? What is the impact of these new technologies on women's health and welfare? To answer these questions this article explores concepts of health, technologies, and women, then gives findings from an extensive literature search on contraception, childbirth, immunization, essential drugs, oral rehydration therapy, water, sanitation, and breast-feeding. The article concludes with recommendations on pre-project planning studies, monitoring, and evaluation. This article is concerned with access to and control of medical technologies by women in developing countries and the impact of technologies transferred in the development process on the health of women. An extensive literature search assesses whether the literature is adequate to guide planners wishing to enhance the health of Third World women, and evaluates whether the conceptual models being used to interpret reports and studies are the most comprehensive, constructive and valid approaches with efficient use of resources and social justice. Women need to be "mainstreamed" into all development projects; special women's projects continue to focus on low-skill, low-technology, low-income activities, which do not enhance the general status of women nor result in improved health. Mainstreaming of women is important in all health projects since women are the producers of environmental hygiene and providers of health care. Suggestions for monitoring improvement in women's health and development projects include 1) numbers of women health workers trained by grade of job; 2) the time-saving potential of improved technologies through women's time budgets; 3) technology transfers to document women's control of the technology 5 years after the end of the project; 4) the range of medical technologies being offered, compared with user preference; 5) the proportion of women trained to maintain health-related technologies; 6) the proportion of self-help appropriate technologies compared with specialist technologies, and 7) when medical technologies/practices are not widely used, are programs redesigned to be more culturally and gender appropriate and economically feasible?
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