Table 3 Negative effects of gender discrimination and inequality and positive effects of equal opportunity and gender equality

• Entry into health occupations impeded

• Equal access to professional education, requisite skills, and knowledge

• Clogged health worker education pipeline

• Increased health worker pipeline

• Workers' career progression impeded

• Equal chance of being hired, fairly paid, and enjoying equal treatment and advancement opportunities

• Workers experience work/family conflict, low morale, stress, lower productivity

• Female health workers better able to juggle life events

• Recruitment bottlenecks

• Better work/life integration for all health workers, less stress

• Worker maldistribution

• Better morale and productivity

• Workplaces experience absenteeism, attrition

• Increased retention

• Limited pool of motivated health workers to deal with today’s health challenges

• More health workers

• More health services