ABSTRACT
The World Health Organization (2010a) reports that 57 percent of the world’s blind people are female, and that the proportion of women in the blind population rises at older ages. We do not usually think of blindness as a gender-linked problem, but the WHO Department of Gender and Health notes that gender inequalities explain much of the disproportionate impact of this problem on women. Globally, women with cataracts are less likely than their male counterparts to have the routine surgery that would prevent blindness-because they have less access than men to the fi nancial resources that would pay for medical care or transportation to a health care facility, less access to education and health information, and less autonomy to make decisions and act on them with respect to health care.
