Gender: A Transversal Focus in Health Policy in Venezuela

For the purpose of confronting the challenges proposed in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela Constitution, & the goals of the National Social & Economic Development Plan, it is necessary to respond to the social needs with universality & equality in an effort to reduce deficits in attention, & to positively change inequalities in living conditions, health services, life cycles, territorial coverage, social classes & ethnic groups. To achieve this purpose implies a country-wide effort to construct a new type of citizen through the conquest of social rights & the upsurge of active, protagonistic & autonomous agents. One of the main objectives of this essay is to give evidence to the purpose of public policy within the new constitutional order, which is none other than to conquer the universality of social rights within the political, social & economic ordering based on gender equality as a maximum expression of justice. The central discussion is focused on one of the three principal axes of the National Plan for Social & Economic Development: the gender focus. In this sense, this essay develops aspects that have to do with the influence of the patriarchal system & with differences constructed socially, that become the justification for gender inequalities in health, & in other profound social inequality areas. With the Strategic Social Plan these aspects are focused on closing the inequality gender gap in public health & advancing towards an epidemiology of the differences. 1 Diagram, References. Adapted from the source document.