MSM Equipped Health Care Providers to support Gender Equality and Women Empowerment in teaching hospitals in Ethiopia

During August and November 2022, two trainings that aimed at capacitating healthcare providers to support gender equality and women empowerment in teaching hospitals were conducted in Ethiopia.

Between 08 and 13 August 2022, training on integrating gender into Health Sciences Education was conducted at Health Sciences College of Addis Ababa University. The overall objective of this training was to build the institutional or in-house capacity on gender so that the gender seminar will be conducted by the existing staff.

“My perspective regarding gender has already changed. I now clearly understand the term and subject matter very well. I have a plan to make others in my surroundings aware about the situation.” - training participant

While from 1 to 5 November, the second training on gender responsiveness teaching and clinical services was conducted at the College of Health and Medical Sciences (CHMS) of Haramaya University. The overall objective of this second training was to create awareness and develop skills on how to provide gender-responsive clinical services and make the health science’s teaching-learning process gender responsive.

In both training sessions, a total of 32 participants (23 women) who are clinical practitioners, internists, and lecturers attended.

The Elisabeth Strouven foundation in Maastricht, the Netherlands, made a grant available to MSM to support the empowerment of women in the health sector in a developing country. The Health Sciences Colleges of Addis Ababa and Haramaya Universities have been partners in the program. For instance, at the Health Sciences College of Addis Ababa University, a seminar guide on integrating Gender into Health Sciences Education was developed in 2019. In the same year, the college's staff were trained to teach gender courses using the seminar guide. Since then, the gender course has been taught in the medical schools of the college. So far, more than 350 medical students took the gender in medical education course.

Both training sessions were interactive with a lot of room for discussion and sharing experiences. The training was led by Dr. Mulu Berhanu, MSM's international gender expert, who has a strong link to universities in Ethiopia.

The participants’ feedback indicate that the training achieved its objectives. Below, some quotes that are captured:

“It was eye-opening training for me. I had such a great experience. The trainer is well versed, and has a clear way of addressing the issues and taught me a great lesson.”
“The training was more eye-opening than I expected. It changed my viewpoints of not just society but also re-examining my behavior. It made me realize how we are constructed socially, how pretty deepens in our culture and upbringing in our daily lives.”

“I have learned to recognize gender-related issues, even the ones that are considered normal.”

MSM's Expert Centre on Emerging Economies
This project is part of MSM's Expert Centre for Emerging Economies. The department is an expert centre on local economic development in emerging and developing markets. We capacitate managers and professionals from government, private sector, NGOs, and post-secondary education in Africa, Asia, Middle East, and Latin America. We offer consultancy and customized training programs, and we manage complex projects in key sectors, e.g. water, agriculture and health. For more information click here.