Advancing Global Research on the Health Implications of Gender Inequality

Project's Details

Title: Advancing Global Research on the Health Implications of Gender Inequality

Funded by: Ministry of Education (MOE) Tier 1

Amount: S$47,180

PI: Associate Professor Kriti Vikram, Department of Sociology and Anthropology and Co-Director of CFPR, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, NUS

Project duration: 1 Aug 2026 to 30 Sep 2028

 

Abstract

Although gender inequality is recognized as a determinant of health, and women’s life expectancy has increased in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), empirical research has primarily focused on children, adolescents, and women of reproductive age. Moreover, there is limited understanding of how women's life experiences and life-course challenges accumulate and influence cardiometabolic risk, mental health, functional limitations, cognitive health, reproductive aging, and mortality in mid- and later life. This project is novel in advancing gender and health scholarship beyond sexual and reproductive health toward a life-course account of women’s ageing and chronic disease risk. Drawing on the stress process framework and the life course perspective, we conceptualise gender inequality as interrelated exposures that generate chronic strain and cumulative disadvantage, become biologically embedded, and shape health in later life.