How are gender inequalities facing India’s one million ASHAs being addressed? Policy origins and adaptations for the world’s largest all-female community health worker programme

Table 2 Early instrumentalist considerations: how can the ASHA enable the health system to achieve its goals?

Policy decision	Rationale
All-female cadre [16, 64]	Women best suited to address maternal and child health (KI_04)
Volunteer cadre [16, 64]	Partially remunerated through performance based incentives to ensure high levels of activity and enable programmatic flexibility (KI_02, KI_07, KI_09)
Selected locally [16, 64]	Close to and likely to remain in community [16]
Training close to villages [16, 64]	Reduce travel to increase ASHA attendance of trainings (KI_01)

ISSN: 1478-4491