Systemic barriers and feminist alternatives to gendered power in global health governance
Original framing: “Feminist leadership in global health: moving beyond tokenism” — bing news
Marginalized voices—Black trans women, disabled activists, sex workers, and Indigenous healers—are systematically excluded from global health leadership despite bearing the brunt of health inequities. Their exclusion is not accidental but structural, as global health institutions prioritize 'respectable' feminists who align with neoliberal agendas. For example, the Global Fund’s 'gender strategy' has been criticized for centering cisgender, heterosexual women while ignoring the needs of LGBTQ+ communities. Amplifying these voices requires ceding power, not just adding seats at the table.
The crisis of feminist leadership in global health is not a lack of qualified women but a systemic refusal to redistribute power—rooted in colonial legacies, neoliberal extractivism, and epistemic violence.
Mainstream narratives frame the problem as one of representation within existing structures, ignoring how these structures were designed to exclude and commodify women’s labor and knowledge. Indigenous and feminist movements from the Global South have long proposed alternatives: leadership as stewardship, health as a sacred balance, and governance as collective responsibility. Yet global health institutions, funded by extractive industries and beholden to neoliberal logics, co-opt these critiques to legitimize incremental reforms while perpetuating harm. True transformation requires dismantling the coloniality of power in health—through decolonial funding, feminist data sovereignty, and community-led governance—while centering the knowledge and needs of those most impacted by health inequities. The path forward is not to 'include' women in broken systems but to build new ones grounded in justice, reciprocity, and liberation.