Handbook on Sex, Gender and Health

This Handbook is the first of its kind addressing gender issues in health in five countries of the South Asian Region, namely: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Adopting a social determinant of health perspective and an intersectionality and diversity lens, the Handbook illustrates the multi-layered complexities of gender, health, and well-being from the diverse perspectives and lived experiences in different South Asian countries. It includes studies on under-researched and often invisible marginalized populations, such as LGBTQI populations, urban poor, persons living with disability, migrant and conflict-affected populations. It represents the voices of the elderly, adolescents, and young people. It goes beyond analyzing the problem of gender inequities in health, and present examples of gender-transformative policies, programmes and social movement action. It is an essential resource for researchers, policy-makers, students in public health and community-based organizations involvedin research, policies, or programs related to sex work, public health, social justice and gender-based violence.

​TK Sundari Ravindran has more than 40 years of experience as an author and editor internationally. Sundari has more than a 100 publications to her credit, including articles in peerreviewed journals, monographs, book chapters and edited volumes. She is a lead author of several WHO publications on gender and health, with a focus on sexual and reproductive health, starting from an early publication in 1984. Sundari is also the editor of a WHO training manual on gender and rights in reproductive health. In 1992, she joined as founding co-editor of the international journal 'Reproductive Health Matters, ' and continued in this position for a little over six years. Sundari is currently a senior editor of the same journal, now renamed 'Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters.' She has co-edited several books, including 'Health inequities in India: A synthesis of recent evidence' by Springer. Sundari has been a guest editor for several journal issues, and a regular reviewer formajor peer reviewed international journals including PLOS One, Global Public Health, BMJ, The Lancet, Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, International Journal of Equity in Health, Economic and Political Weekly, and the Indian Journal of Public Health. She has also reviewed book proposals and manuscripts for Springer and Routledge publishers. As a professor at Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology, Sundari has conducted regular workshops for research scholars on scientific writing and publishing. M. Sivakami is a distinguished academic, researcher and author for over 20 years. She has published widely (90 plus articles) in peer-reviewed national and international journals such as Lancet, PLOS One, BMJ Open, Journal of Global Health, BMC-Public Health, International Journal of Health Policy Management (IJHPM), Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters (SRHM), Journal of Bio-Social Science (JBS), Asian Population Studies, Health Transition Review, Economic and Political Weekly, Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, Demography India, and Sociological Bulletin among others. She has also published chapters in books published internationally by Springer and Palgrave Macmillan. Sivakami is an Academic Editor in PLOS Global Public Health and on the editorial board of various journals. Sivakami's expertise is in the intersection of Gender, Health and Demography using mixed methodology. As a professor at TISS, Sivakami has been teaching gender and health to public health students for over a decade and believes gender is a significant lens to address health and well-being inequities in India. Anjana Bhushan retired in June 2024 from the World Health Organization, where she worked, most recently, as Technical Officer (Gender, Equity and Human Rights), in the Department of Family Health/UHC at WHO's Regional Office for South-East Asia. In this capacity, she provided technical leadership and evidence-based advice to WHO's Member States on ways to systematically inte