A community health programme in rural Tamil Nadu, India: the need for gender justice for women.

This article highlights the efforts of the Community Health and Development (CHAD) Programme of Christian Medical College to address the issues of gender discrimination and improve the status of women in the Kaniyambadi Block, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India. The many schemes that are specifically for women and general projects for the community from which women can also benefit represent a multi-pronged approach whose aim is the improvement of women's health, education and employment in the context of community development. However, despite five decades of work with a clear bias in favour of women, the improvement in health and the empowerment of women has lagged behind that achieved by men.