Why Gender & Eye Health on this World Sight Day?

By : Shanthakumari Gopal (sgopal@sightsavers.org)

Programme Officer - NEAO


My 15 years of intensive work experience in HIV and AIDS, gender, dalits and adhivasis rights, made myself so immune to look at any issues with that perspective. The third day of my work in eye care field was a visit to one of the hospital partner. Going through various records and documents, one thing strike me was the data where slightly larger number of women accessing eye care services in the free and subsidy sections. Hence forth my search began to find out the facts, on the process…. brought out the discussion with many Ophthalmologists but many of them responded that women and men are equally affected by eye diseases. It was hard to accept hence tried reading various journals then understood that the eye care issues are highly prevalent among women due to various factors.


Vision 2020 theme for the year 2009 is “Gender and Eye Health”. It is a well thought of theme at this juncture where a great level of disparity occurs in terms of accessing eye care services by men and women. Salute to the person/team that thought of this theme.


Two out of every three people in the world who are blind are women, 90% of blindness occurs in the developing world. Women and girls who are blind are doubly disadvantaged by their gender and their disability status. Surveys of Asian and African countries where cataract is the biggest cause of blindness have shown that women can account for as high a proportion as 74% of all people living with cataract.


What is gender?

To understand the theme Gender and Eye Health, first we should know what Gender is. Gender at a descriptive level refers to social differences between men and women. Gender at an analytical level refers to power relations between men and women. In other words, Gender describe those characteristics of men and women which are socially determined in contrast to those which are biologically determined. The fact is that only sex – the biological difference can differentiate men and women.


People are born male and female but learn to be girls and boys and grow into women and men. The socially constructed roles and responsibilities of men and women cleverly marginalize woman as a second class citizen and strategically denying their fundamental rights. Through reinforcing the set roles and responsibilities from the child birth women and girl children are confined within a limited circle, which keeps them away from getting exposed to the out side world resulting women with low self esteem and empowerment.


However the scenario is, women do 67 per cent of the world’s work, yet their earnings for it amount to only 10 % of the world’s income - according to UN statistics. Also, women are the central to success of poverty alleviation efforts but our policy makers fail to recognise the strategic potential of women as critical actors in the process of moving their families out of poverty.


In reality, due to the second class status women are exploited and denied basic rights which leads more than 70% of women in Indian society suffer from Anaemia and various other diseases including eye diseases and blindness.


Factors for high prevalence among women:

Although a limited explanation available with regard to gender disparities in blindness, the following are considered as some of the factors resulting high prevalence among women.

• Life expectancy of women is higher than men.


• Women much less likely access eye care information, services compare with that of men due to social, cultural and economic factors.


• Women of all ages are more frequently exposed to causative factors such as infectious disease and malnutrition.

Need of the hour:

We are well aware, through our eye care services we ultimately aim the society to have a better health thus live away from poverty and hunger. To alleviate poverty and hunger women should be in the centre of all process including our eye care services. So the need of the hour is …….

• Eye care professionals and policy makers should recognize that eye care issues and blindness is highly prevalent among women.


• The eye care organization should bring gender as one of its mandate to ensure equal access by both the sex. More women should be on board involving planning, monitoring and evaluation of the programmes and projects.


• To achieve equal coverage, women should account for around 65-70% of all cataract surgical cases. Blindness and severe visual impairment from cataract could be reduced by around 12.5% in low and middle income countries if women were to receive cataract surgery at the same rate as men