This International Women's Day, 8 March 2024, we want to join the United Nations in celebrating under the theme 'Invest in women: Accelerate progress'.

In light of this, we spoke with Iccha Basnyat (Ph.D., MPH), associate professor of global health communication in the Global Affairs Program at George Mason University (US), with a joint appointment in the Department of Communication. She lived and worked in Singapore, where she taught at the National University of Singapore for 10 years and then at James Madison University (US) before joining George Mason University in 2021.

Iccha is also the editor of Centering Women, Health, and Health Equity in Health Communication, a Research Topic that explores women-centered understandings of health and health communication to address gender, racial, and cultural gaps in knowledge production.

We wanted to know what sparked her passion for women's representation in health communication and what it was like to be a researcher in this field.

1) You’ve chosen a very crucial and timely area of focus with this Research Topic. What personal or professional motivations inspired you to center women as the focus?

“It goes back to when I started my dissertation on women's reproductive health in Nepal. I have always been interested in women's health, particularly looking at the health of marginalized or excluded women with limited resources and who are underserved.

"As the Research Topic highlights, research about women by women that advances knowledge about women's health needs to be centered and brought into everyday discussion.

“Although my research focuses on women and health, I think more broadly about gender and health because it's more inclusive and opens up conversation beyond just our sexuality and beyond just a bio-medical understanding of women's health.”

Led by Topic Editor Iccha Basnyat, Centering Women, Health, and Health Equity in Health Communication calls attention to gendered patterns of labor and ongoing patriarchal attitudes that have systematically ignored and/or erased women's voices, worldviews, and cultural frames of reference in the production of health knowledge and communication around health.

Women's perspectives on health, especially the experiences of women of color, often get excluded from academic research. Women of color also experience particular erasures at the intersection of race, class, and culture, among others.

The COVID-19 pandemic has further accentuated gender gaps in research and practice. The intensified physical and mental loads of parenting, caregiving, and household management have resulted in an increased prioritization of domestic responsibilities over professional roles.

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2) Could you share deeper insights on why you feel gender, race, and culture are essential to consider when studying health communication?

“When we talk about women and health, generally, we have a medicalized perception that we're talking about our biological or sexual health. This approach emphasizes the biomedical aspects of health and ignores the socio-cultural, political, historical, and economic contexts of women's health.

“In the context of this Research Topic and my own research, we center on the social aspect. This work begins to connect women's health to materiality and access, as well as intersections of gender, race, and culture, among other aspects that impact their health and health outcomes. It also moves us more towards a holistic thinking of women's health.

“Intersections and socio-cultural contexts differ from one context to another. Still, whenever we think about women's health, healthcare access, and better health outcomes, especially in marginalized spaces, those intersections become very important because they tell us what's being left out and what is necessary for us to move forward in addressing women's health."

3) How do you think discussions like this one will continue to shape the landscape of health communication, particularly about representation and inclusivity?

“The first thing is the visibility of prioritizing a holistic approach to women's health. The second thing is raising awareness about research and approaches to addressing women's health by centering women's voices. The third thing is to create spaces for conversations about women's health beyond a traditional biomedical understanding.

“We've been talking about women's health from a biomedical perspective for far too long, and in that, women themselves are left out.

“When we situate women's health within a broader social, cultural, historical, and political context, as well as within the patriarchy that still exists in both the global north and global south and the gendered aspects of healthcare, then we start to think and address women's health differently. This holistic approach reflects the women’s reality and lives, and even more so centers the women themselves.”

4) What active steps can the research community take to be more inclusive and mindful of gender, racial, and cultural disparities in health communication?

“Working to be more inclusive and mindful begins with creating spaces for conversations about disparities and inequalities. This requires being intentional about the research and ensuring we listen and support people, research, and topics that are traditionally ignored or left out.

“When we think about research and researchers, we must reflect on who is being represented and included, as well as whose voices, representation, and stories are being excluded.

“If we want to ensure that we are, in fact, supportive and inclusive and address disparities in health communication, we need to be able to step back and listen to what is being said about the women's lived experiences and reality. We need to think about who is producing knowledge about women's health and to what extent women themselves are part of this conversation.”

5) What advice would you offer to young female researchers who might be interested in pursuing a similar field of study?

“Reflecting on my own experience and who I've become as a scholar, I would say that being a female researcher, especially a woman of color whose work addresses social injustices, is not an easy road. But those struggles are necessary to make changes.

“I started my professional path on critical qualitative work centered on women's health, intersections, marginalized spaces, and the global south, all topics and conversations that are still sidelined in mainstream academic research and knowledge production.

“However, what has gotten me here is a community of mentors and peers. You must also do the same as part of that community. It is vital to start becoming a mentor and a supportive peer from the get-go, especially for those whose identities are marginalized and are also working in traditionally overlooked and excluded academic spaces.

“We have this illusion in academia that it's about you, your work, and that it's all about you as a scholar. Of course, it's about your voice and identity, but still, you cannot sustain a career in academia without a community that has stood with you in solidarity and supported you.”

A journey, not a sprint: Overcoming barriers in inclusive research

On a final reflection, Iccha underscores how the work on issues such as health equity, gender, and race representation may take longer, and that is a natural thing to happen when working towards creating lasting and enduring changes.

“This Research Topic has taken us two years to curate, proving the point of women's struggle, especially underscoring the accentuated gender gaps in research and practice during the pandemic.

“Through this journey, we have realized the importance of time, space, and support for women scholars. I have been working with an amazing team of women scholars on this Research Topic, and we are a collective that has built a community to support and elevate women scholars' work in health communication.

“We now have eight great articles from authors located in different places and with different identities. This is just the beginning. We are slowly striving forward in health communication with much to do, so I invite my fellow women scholars to join the community.”