The “Inside the FP Story” podcast explores the fundamentals of designing and implementing family planning programming. Season 3 will explore how to approach gender integration in family planning programs—including reproductive empowerment, gender-based violence prevention and response, and male engagement. Hear from a variety of guests as they offer practical examples and specific guidance on integrating gender awareness and equality within their family planning programs. The podcast launches Wednesday, April 20, with new episodes released every Wednesday until May 3.

This issue of GovAsia looks at the multidimensional impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in eight cities across Asia. It draws on research conducted between October 2020 and April 2021 that focused on the perspectives and experiences of those who receive the fewest benefits of urbanization due to a range of intersecting marginalized identities and experiences, such as their gender, ethnic identity, low remuneration levels, and insecure employment status.

This commentary argues that while women and girls and men and boys are all affected by the current mental health crisis amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the crisis among men warrants close attention given potential impacts on global public health and the unique, gendered responses required to meet men’s needs. Along with their call to address social and economic vulnerabilities exacerbated during the pandemic, the authors provide examples of evidence-based, scalable interventions to support men’s mental health.

The Choices and Challenges tool highlights trends in women’s contraceptive uptake, discontinuation, and method-switching by age group, as well as reasons for discontinuation and related reproductive outcomes, in an accessible, user-friendly format. The 2022 update now includes data for Liberia and Rwanda. The web feature is designed to support policy and program decisionmakers in delivering high-quality, client-centered care that enables women and couples to make the best family planning choices for themselves.

This blog post explores some of the findings of a recently published paper from Brookings exploring the potential effect of public policy responses on gender-related differences in enterprise performance. Exploiting the large cross-country variation in public health and economic policy responses, Brookings studied whether good public policies were associated with a narrower performance gap between male- and female-owned businesses.

Efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic reduced access to gender-based violence information and services, driving increased use of technology and online spaces. This paper serves as an alarm bell for the international community, digital and feminist movements, private technology companies, and national governments to act in unison to end the rising scourge of technology-facilitated gender-based violence.