Gynephobic Politics: Standing Up To Advance Global Health For Women

This lesson was created by Jeron Velasco, a high school social studies teacher in Cibecue, AZ, as part of the fall 2025 Pulitzer Center Teacher Fellowship program. It is designed for facilitation across approximately three class periods.

For more lessons created by Pulitzer Center Teacher Fellows in this cohort, click here.

This lesson provides the students the understanding of how political policies affect the health of the population, especially of women and children in marginalized communities like Indigenous groups and people in the rural areas.

Lesson Overview

In this lesson, the students will analyze the changes in rural Argentina, especially to women's organizations in the era after president Javier Milei was elected to power, using the article “Women’s Rights in Argentina in the Era of Javier Milei” by Anita Pouchard Serra and Natalie Alcoba. Considering the international and local perspectives in the article by making a graphic organizer, learners will deepen their understanding of the social movements, community organizing, and problem-solving initiatives of Indigenous women in Rural Argentina to address economic, political, social and cultural challenges. Socio-economic and health statistics between the United States and Argentina will be compared by students to give context to the reporting. With the help of the World Health Organization website and online sources about Native American communities, students will analyze data by comparing Population, Current Health Expenditure, Life Expectancy at Birth, Maternal Mortality, Neonatal Mortality, Family Planning and Births Attended by skilled health personnel. 

Objectives

At the end of the lesson the students will be able to:

1. Identify the changes that happened to the social, political and health rights of women in Argentina after the election of President Javier Milei.
2. Compare and contrast health data from the United States, Argentina, and Native American communities.
3. Plan an advocacy campaign to promote women’s health in their community.

Performance Task

The culminating activity is making a poster: 

Step 1. Using the Hexagonal Thinking strategy. Students will connect and reason how the government affects women's rights, health expenditure, and life expectancy.
Step 2. Students will write concrete plans on how to use human capital and political resources to address the global health inequalities women suffer after comparing data from the United States, Argentina, and Native American Communities. Their plans will be posted in a commitment wall for them to elaborate and specify in TPPS (Think-Pair-Post-Share).

Assessment

1. Data Deep-dive worksheet using World Economic Forum (Global Gender Gap Report) and World Health Organization
2. Pulitzer report reading comprehension worksheet with guided questions 

Notes on Context & Content Advisory

This lesson contains references to abortion, maternal and neo-natal mortality.

My students are members of White Mountain Apache Tribe in North Eastern Rural Arizona.

Three-day lesson plan, including texts and video resources, discussion questions, and a final activity. Download below to read the complete lesson plan.

Lesson Resources

Arizona History and Social Studies Standards

Economics

• HS.E3.3 Evaluate the role of the government in regulating market places. 

• HS.E1.1 Evaluate how and why people make choices to improve their economic well-being.

History

• HS.H3.1 Analyze how societies, leaders, institutions, and organizations respond to societal needs and changes. 

• HS.H4.1 Examine how historically marginalized groups have affected change on political and social institutions.

For this lesson, students analyzed Pulitzer Center reporting on women's health in Argentina.

Students were then asked to imagine they were reporters for the story and tasked with giving three concrete, realistic actions to strengthen the health of Native American Women in order to improve health conditions in their own community.

As a final project, students created posters advocating for change concerning a particular health issue in their community.

Teacher Reflection

This lesson provides the students the understanding of how political policies affect the health of the population, especially of women and children in marginalized communities like the Indigenous groups and people in the rural areas. This also gives them the idea of how freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of the assembly can cultivate action towards the movement of demanding more attention, funding, and support to the causes of women's rights and people's welfare. 

What is the focus of your lesson plan, and why did you write this lesson for your community?

I am a cultural exchange teacher from the Philippines with 13 years of teaching experience. I've been teaching in middle school and high school. I also was able to teach some undergraduate courses in a university. I am currently teaching Economics, US History and Government in Dishchii’bikoh High School. My students are mostly from the Sophomores, Juniors and Seniors. They are members of the White Mountain Apache tribe in the community of Cibecue, Arizona. The primary focus of our community school is to preserve the culture, language and heritage of our Apache students through a curriculum that focuses on their community and the skills that they can acquire as they proceed to become leaders of the tribe, labor employees in the greater White Mountain area or proceed to tertiary education.

How did you build this lesson with your community in mind?

My lesson is about the article on the women's movement and social causes amongst Rural and Indigenous communities in Argentina. I also reflected on my lesson the connection of health issues amongst women especially on National expenditure on health life expectancy maternal mortality rate and infant mortality rate. The data, statistics and facts that are sourced from the article about the political change in Argentina together with the of different reliable surveys in the health of Native American peoples directed this lesson to show comparison and differentiate the communities.

This lesson provides the students the understanding on how political policies affect the health of the population especially of women and children in marginalized communities like the indigenous groups and people in the rural areas. This also gives them the idea of how freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of the assembly can cultivate action towards the movement of demanding more attention funding and support to the causes of women's rights and people's welfare.

The lesson challenges the students to act on their knowledge from the information they gathered based on the reporting in the research about health issues here in the United States and in Argentina. They have to come up with Concrete Solutions and actions on how to mobilize as a coordinated social group towards demanding Fair health and Medical support from the government and at the same time holding people in power accountable to their policies and especially the government on its programs toward women's health.

What did your students learn while engaging with this lesson?

The students were encouraged to analyze the reporting by first reading the questions so they are aware for the answers they are looking for. Argentina's political landscape shift is the focus of the article and how it affected the health aspect of women especially those in rural areas.

Another skill that the students need to acquire and use in this lesson is their technological and critical thinking skills. They are provided with a worksheet that focuses on the data from the World Health Organization website to compare the expenses, programs and health statistics of the United States and Argentina.

For the cases of Native American communities especially on health statistics, it was more challenging as there is no single website to gather the information from. The students will fill up the columns to compare the health statistics across places from Argentina to the United States and the Native American communities.

Afterward they will answer higher order thinking critical questions by comparing the data from their accomplished deep-dive table. Another task for the students to connect the information they gathered and make meaning out of it is the hexagonal thinking approach.

Students has to be in pairs and from the deep dive data Gathering tool they will write down the keywords and place it next to each other by explaining why these keywords are connected and why it is important for government to secure the health aspect of its people from Argentina to the United States then in Native American communities. Teresa said she wants increased funding for the health sector. Nia focuses on the call for increased tribal sovereignty and jurisdiction to address its needs and problems. Another student calls for increased funding for Native American hospitals to avail Advanced Technologies.

What did you learn by creating and teaching this lesson?

As a teacher who is now trained on global reporting especially about health issues by Pulitzer journalists and organizers, I feel there is more to do on researching and reporting and connecting the information we gather online from reliable sources to the lesson we teach on contemporary issues to our students.

It is important to check the angle of the story together with the goal of the lesson and how to bring the interest of the students in their communities to the level of global awareness which will culminate in the formulation of a concrete solution from scaffolding activities to a fruitful project.

Integrating the lessons from the perspective of journalists on the ground it may be from geography, science, politics, economics or social life, is important in projecting a lesson that will give an avenue for the learners to explore and learn the lived experiences of communities and peoples who might be in plain sight are normal realities but on a deeper look and more critical scrutiny has hidden problems and deep-rooted dilemmas which can be discussed by creative lesson plans and meaningful materials to encourage the students in taking a more holistic and integrated approach to their own community's needs and challenges.

About Jeron Velasco

Currently, Jeron teaches at Dishchii’bikoh Community School as a high school social studies teacher and History Club lead. He is also a C-SPAN Teacher Fellow, 2025 Gilder Lehrman Arizona History Teacher of the Year, Al Mérito Awardee, and co-author of Heroes of Cibecue.