Assessing the Gender-Sensitivity of International Financial Institutions' Responses to COVID-19: Reflections from Home (with Kids) in Lockdown.

This reflection considers recent United Nations' normative developments in international human rights law and their potential to assess, with a gender perspective, retrogressive economic policies being promoted by International Financial Institutions (IFIs) in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Orthodox and androcentric economic policies, such as structural adjustment, austerity, privatisation and deregulation of labour and financial markets, normally have devastating effects on women's rights. Yet, the financial responses with which IFIs are trying to help states manage the effects of the pandemic seem to continue promoting those androcentric economic policies. This piece concludes that ex ante human rights and gender impact assessments of multilateral loans' conditionalities should be conducted and that women's participation in this process as well as access to adequate quantitative and qualitative data to understand the differentiated effects of those economic policies on gender equality, are crucial. These reflections were born out of the authors' own family and country challenges.

Characteristics and trends in the expansion of private dental schools in Brazil.

OBJECTIVE: This article describes and analyses the characteristics of the expansion of private dental education in Brazil from 1996 to December 2018 and its relationships with public policies and the country's labour and education market in dentistry. METHOD: The study used an exploratory and descriptive quantitative approach involving standardised data-collection techniques from open-access secondary databases. RESULT: From 1996 to 2018 there was an overall increase of 315% in dental schools (582% in the private sector and 49% in the public sector). Brazil had 374 dental schools in December 2018, 307 of which were private and 67 of which were public. The 374 schools offered 47,192 admission places, 89% of which were private. In five states, dental education is 100% private, while in another 19 states the private supply exceeds 70% of the total. In the other three states this offer is between 40% and 67%. From 1996 to 2016, the private sector's share of dental school graduates was 66%. Women represented 73% of Brazilian dental-school graduates in 2016. CONCLUSION: Privatisation of dental education in Brazil raises challenges for the development of policies, planning, organisation of care, and structuring of the training process for dentists, as well as the dynamics of the labour market in the health system.

O agir econômico como motor da política de saúde na Alemanha: consequências para a prevenção e promoção da saúde / Economic behaviour as leitmotiv in health policy in Germany and its consequences for prevention and health promotion

Since the mid 1970s the health policy in Germany has focused on cost containment - precisely reduction of employer's contribution for statutory health insurance (SHI). However political parties and the government have also changed their strategies to achieve this aim. The grown structures of SHI concerned with financing, provision and management remained unaltered till the early 90s. The 90s are marked by a broad transformation of the health sector. Regulatory instruments have been developed to create financial incentives for all stakeholders (sickness funds, health care providers, insured/patients) to reduce expenditure in health sector. The transformation process is marked by normative principle of taking stakeholders as economic subjects acting rationally. The article aims at evaluating the desired/undesired impacts of this paradigm shift, where solidarity is surpassed by competition, co-payment and privatisation. It shows where this paradigm change can be observed and which instruments have been used for its realisation. It is also given an analysis on the reaction of important stakeholders to this change. Finally, it is demonstrated ,by using examples of prevention and health promotion that the only focus on economic models doesnït allow health policy to adequately meet the challenges set upon it.

Privatização e processo decisório / Privatisation et processus de décision / Privatization and the decision-making process

This article examines the political determinants of privatization of the fixed telephony sector in four countries, based on a neo-institutionalist approach. These countries faced similar pressures by telephone companies in favor of privatization, suggesting an apparent convergence in the sector's reorganization. However, although all four adopted some degree of privatization, the process followed different paths and designs in each country. This variation can be explained by the different institutional contexts in which the reforms were carried out. Where there was concentration of power in the Executive, privatization was launched "earlier" and approved more quickly than in countries in which such concentration waslessintense. Meanwhile, the existence of multiple veto points and stakeholders with veto power did not impede the reform, but increased the cost of its unilateral adoption by the Executive, forcing the latter to negotiate and form a minimum consensus within the governing coalition.

Dans cet article, on examine les déterminants politiques de la privatisation dans le secteur de la téléphonie fixe dans quatre pays à partir d'une approche néo-institutionnelle. Ces pays ont subi des pressions assez semblables en faveur de la privatisation des entreprises de téléphonie qui convergeaient apparemment vers la réorganisation du secteur. Malgré leur adhésion à la privatisation, chaque pays a suivi des voies et des modèles divers. Cette variation peut s'expliquer à partir des différences de contexte institutionnel où les réformes ont eu lieu. La concentration du pouvoir exécutif a contribué à un début "précoce" de la privatisation approuvée dans un délai plus court que celui des pays où cette concentration était plus faible. La présence de plusieurs points de veto et de partenaires ayant pouvoir de veto, n'a pas empêché la réforme mais a accru le coût de son adoption unilatérale par le pouvoir exécutif, imposant la négociation et la formation d'un consensus mínimum au sein de l'alliance gouvernementale.