Conceptualization of gender in published malaria and gender research: a systematic descriptive review

Background: Malaria disproportionately affects vulnerable and marginalised population subgroups, including women and girls, migrants, and persons with disabilities. Gender roles expose men and women differently to malaria risks. Similarly, restrictive gender norms pose unique challenges to women and girls in accessing preventive treatment and care. Gender norms that perpetuate hegemonic masculinity also expose men and boys to malaria, resulting from occupational exposure and untimely access to malaria treatment and care. Unfortunately, the gender dimensions of malaria remain under-researched. This systematic descriptive review examines how gender has been conceptualised in published malaria and gender research over the last three decades. Methods: The keywords “malaria AND gender” were used to search for articles published in English from 1995 to 2024 in four databases (PubMed, Scopus, Science Direct, and Google Scholar). The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) was adopted for this review. The Rayyan intelligent systematic review software was used to collate, manage, and screen articles retrieved from the search engines. The gender analysis matrix advanced by Morgan and colleagues was used to analyse the conceptualisation of gender in published malaria and gender research. Results: A total of 57 published articles that met the inclusion criteria were included in the final review. We found that the majority of the published papers on malaria and gender have been biomedical in nature, consequently reducing gender analysis to only sex-disaggregated data. Moreover, most of the studies employed a quantitative research approach, with the majority being laboratory-based research, focussing on sub-Saharan Africa. Conclusion: There is a need for more social science research that employs qualitative, mixed-methods, and community-based approaches to malaria and gender research. These approaches extend gender analysis beyond sex and/or gender-disaggregated data, and includes other domains, such as access to resources; distribution of labour; practices and roles; norms, values and beliefs; and decision-making power.