Acknowledgments

This publication was produced for WHO by Dr Karen Messing from CINBIOSE, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada and Dr Piroska östlin from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, with input from Dr Claudia García-Moreno, Department of Gender, Women and Health (GWH) and Dr Gerry Eijkemans, Occupational and Environmental Health Unit in the Department of Public Health and Environment (PHE), WHO.

The planning of this publication began at a WHO Symposium entitled “Gender and Work-related Health Issues: Moving the Agenda Forward”, which Dr östlin coordinated for WHO at the Women Work and Health Conference, held June 2-5, 2002, in Stockholm, Sweden.

The contributions to the Symposium provided valuable input to this overview paper, and they covered: ‘Gender and health-related work concerns in agriculture’ by Dr Sophia Kisting, Occupational and Environmental Health Research and Education Unit, University of Capetown, South Africa; ‘Global gender issues in health and industrial work’ by Elisabeth Lagerlöf, European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, Dublin, Ireland, and ‘Women sex workers’ lives and prescriptions for their health’ by Meena Shivdas, Gender and development specialist in Singapore. These papers were edited by Drs östlin and Messing and can be found on the website of GWH on http://www.who.int/gender/publications.

WHO would also like to thank Dr Salma Galal, previously in GWH and Dr Marilyn Fingerhut, previously in PHE, for their valuable contributions to the development of this publication.

We hope that this collective work of women in the field of gender,work and health can make a contribution to all working women in the world.