Gender equity in transitional China's healthcare policy reforms

This paper explores the gendered impact of Chinese healthcare reforms, drawing attention to the complex and changing nature of gender inequities in China's current economic and social transformations. Using official and academic sources, it examines the reforms' impact on access to reproductive healthcare, the gendered effects of changes in health sector financing particularly the collapse of insurance systems and rising costs of healthcare, and the implications of China's demographic transition on women's informal healthcare roles. This paper suggests areas that policy-makers, researchers, and activists should prioritize to address inequity, including developing public health policy based on the systematic monitoring of health impacts and trends from a gender perspective, strengthening rural medical facilities to meet the basic healthcare needs of rural populations (including sexual and reproductive health needs), and reforming the healthcare system together with social security systems to equitably cover the poor and the elderly.