Brazil
Founded: November 2021
Women in Global Health Brazil was initiated by Flavia Virginio, PhD Gabriela Borin, PhD Janessa Morgado, MSc. Laurenice Pires, PhD and Luana Tanaka, PhD upon invitation from WGH Global. The WGH Brazil Chapter is part of a global network to achieve gender equality in health leadership. We believe that everyone has the right to achieve levels of participation in leadership and decision-making in health, regardless of their gender, sexuality, color/ethnicity, disabilities, socioeconomic status, politics, culture, or geography. In this context, we bring together professionals from across the country to advance the issue of gender equality in health and catalyze change.
Our aims
Considering Brazil’s context, we start from the assumption of intersectionality, that is, when we talk about women in the areas of Health, we include women belonging to groups that are still marginalized, black, indigenous, immigrants, transgender, and people with disabilities. Therefore, our goal is to promote female leadership in all the spectrum in Health, offering them support so that they are interested in leadership that is still mostly occupied by men, although women are the most part of the Brazilian workforce.
WGH Brazil will focus to engage and support women to obtain equal levels of participation in leadership and decision-making. We will focus on the following areas:
- Women’s leadership in health
- Inclusion and diversity in health
- Salary parity in health
Get in touch
Our achievements
- Position statement against the Brazilian Ministry of Health for the new prenatal booklet and the handling of obstetric violence
- Participation in the WGH Delegation to the 75 World Health Assembly
- Support in the translation of WGH documents/letters into Portuguese.
- Successful nomination of Monica Maquiné Batista to the Prize “Heroines of Health 2022”.
- Drafting the Chapter’s 5-year strategic plan
- Co-sponsorship of WGH’s Regional Town Hall on Prevention of and Response Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Harassment in Global Health
- Participation at XV Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, side event “Acercamiento multilateral de la economía del Cuidado”
Ongoing Activities
- Official launch of Brazilian Chapter at the 2022 ABRASCO Congress on Public Health;
- Identification of data sources and research on the situation of female healthcare workers (HCW) in Brazil.
- Planning of a mentoring program.
- Monthly Meetings with the WGH Chapters in Latin America (Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, and Mexico), workshops, and group discussions.
- Support for the Project “Semeando Ciência: Meninas em Campo!” funded by the British Council Brazil and Fundação Carlos Chagas.
Our Leaders
- Flavia Virginio, Biologist, PhD. Researcher and Curator of Entomological Collection, Instituto Butantan, São Paulo, Brazil.
- Gabriela Borin, Physical Therapist, Epidemiologist, MSc, MPH & PhD. Research Assistance, Harvard System Innovation Lab, Harvard School of Public Health.
- Janessa Morgado, Pharmacist, MSc & PhD in Public Health at University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
- Laurenice Pires, Social Worker, PhD Student in Public Health at Fiocruz, invited coordinator of the Specialization in Human Rights, Ethnic-Racial Relations, Fiocruz.
- Luana F. Tanaka, Nutritionist, Epidemiologist & PhD. Researcher, Technical University of Munich, Germany.
