ID: 1500
Presenting Author: Tihut Asfaw
Session: 681 - Gender and Intersectional Analysis in IA: Showcasing theory and practice
Status: pending
This poster demonstrates how Health Canada's HIA program uses an SGBA Plus lens to identify and address gender-based harms from resource development, improving HIA robustness.
Traditional Impact Assessment (IA) often overlooks factors causing differential health effects from resource projects on diverse groups. Health Canada's new methodology, centered on Health Impact Assessment (HIA), addresses this. It uses "pathways of effects" analyses and applies the Sex and Gender-Based Analysis Plus (SGBA Plus) framework as a critical, intersectional lens. This programmatic shift provides IA practitioners with a clear method to assess how various health effects emerge, enhancing assessment rigor. An example from remote Northern Canada showcases the power of SGBA Plus-informed pathway analysis to reveal hidden vulnerabilities. While a project offers general employment benefits, this lens on the "Employment and Social Spillover" pathway can uncover gendered power imbalances, specifically regarding the safety of Indigenous women and girls. For instance, a hypermasculine work culture and demanding schedules, combined with other factors, may contribute to some non-Indigenous male workers engaging in sexual exploitation or aggravated assault. These critical factors are often missed in current IAs, leading to gaps in understanding. This integrated methodology allows practitioners to move beyond basic compliance to systematically identify and mitigate less visible harms, supporting more context-sensitive project outcomes.
Tihut Asfaw, Senior Policy Analyst at Health Canada, specializes in HIA, GBA+, and Indigenous health policy.
Coauthor 1: Joanne De Montigny