This volume brings together two areas of health that are among the foci of current development efforts, as articulated by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), namely sexual and reproductive health (MDG 5: improve maternal health, target 2: achieve, by 2015, universal access to reproductive health); and Gender (MDG 3: promote gender equality and empower women). Few, if any, published books have dealt in a comprehensive way with public health aspects of these two strongly interrelated areas of health. Most published volumes devoted to sexual and reproductive health have a strong clinical focus, whereas books on gender tend to concentrate primarily on the socio-cultural and anthropological aspects of the subject.