Gender & Outbreaks
“Not asking such questions now may bear a great cost — and one that will primarily be borne by women.” — Julia Smith
Like everything in our daily lives, coronavirus is not affecting women and men equally. Thus, we need the think about the gender aspect of this Coronavirus pandemic, ask questions and try to overcome the tyranny of the urgent.
In this blog post, I will mention the gender gaps in responses of outbreaks, the tyranny of the urgent, and the 3 aspects women are affected more by outbreaks.
First of all, let’s look at the gender differences Coronavirus pandemic.
Data so far provides no clear pattern in terms of who is more likely to become infected with COVID-19. However, it shows that among confirmed cases, men are consistently dying at a higher rate across countries where data is available.
Live data tracker: sex-disaggregated COVID-19 data: https://globalhealth5050.org/covid19/
We still don’t know why men are more like to die because of Coronavirus. Professor Sarah Hawkes from the Global Health 50–50 Initiative argues that this difference could be because of biological differences, behavior differences, and gender.
Here you can watch the mentioned interview:
Actually, this is not the first time an outbreak affects men and women differently:
- Men were also disproportionately likely to die during SARS and MERS outbreaks, which were caused by similar coronavirus.
- The Zika virus, which may result in a relatively mild infection but it is particularly risky during pregnancy.
Besides the biological aspect, outbreaks affect women and men differently in social life, too. Although male mortality rates are higher in these outbreaks, socially, women are affected more negatively than men.
But this difference doesn’t take into account in the time of crisis, so there occur gender gaps in responses — which mostly exclude women.
According to Julia Smith’s article, “Overcoming the ‘tyranny of the urgent’: integrating gender into disease outbreak preparedness and response”, in a review of researches on both Ebola and Zika outbreaks, there is less than 1 percent published research discussed gender issues.
Here are some examples of the gender gaps in responses:
- WHO’s Ebola Response Roadmap includes only one sentence about women.
- The World Bank’s (2014) report on The Economic Impact of the 2014 Ebola Epidemic did not discuss gendered economic impacts of the epidemic.
- Report by the Harvard-LSHTM Independent Panel on the Global Response to Ebola, also, fails to include any discussion of the gendered dimensions of the outbreak or response.
- Documents from the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA), a multi-sectoral and multilateral effort, established under American leadership in 2014 to accelerate progress towards disease outbreak preparedness, also do not include any degree of gender analysis.
Why are there gender gaps in these responses?
This is because of the tyranny of the urgent, as Sara Davies and Belinda Bennett in 2016, which puts aside structural issues in favor of addressing immediate biomedical needs.
Sara Davies and Belinda Bennett note that:
“The vulnerabilities of women and girls during complex emergencies are equally present during a public health emergency but are relatively underexamined in these circumstances compared to the study of gender, health and inequality during natural disasters.”
Let’s look at the 3 gendered aspects of women’s lives that are affected by the outbreaks:
Care Work by Women
The care work provided by women should be supported, while providing alternatives that empower women. — Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, 2010
As we all know, almost all caregivers are women in today’s world. Before COVID-19 became a pandemic, women were doing three times as much unpaid care and domestic work as men.
According to the UN’s The Impact of COVID-19 on Women policy brief, unpaid care work has increased, with children out-of-school, heightened care needs of older persons and overwhelmed health services.
Sophie Harman explains, in “Ebola, gender and conspicuously invisible women in global health governance”, the caregiver role of women in time of crisis as “Shock Absorber”:
“Women absorb the burden of care through self-exploitation (leading to direct and indirect health impacts on women as a gender), reliance on family, or outsourcing care roles to poorer women.” — Sophie Harman
Women’s Reproductive Rights
On the other hand, women’s reproductive rights are in danger because they are ‘non-essential’ during the pandemic.
During the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, maternal health clinics were closed as an outbreak response. The maternal mortality rate in the region, already one of the highest in the world, increased by 70 percent.
During the Coronavirus pandemic, according to Claire Provost from openDemocracy:
- In the US, conservative states from Texas to Indiana are banning most abortions during the pandemic.
- In Poland, a bill to further restrict abortion has been revived and will be heard in Parliament next week. When this first happened, in 2016, it was met with mass protests — which are currently prohibited under coronavirus emergency measures.
- In Italy, doctors can refuse to perform abortions (and up to 90 percent do, in some areas). Medical terminations (consisting of two pills, taken across several days), are only available during the first seven weeks of pregnancy, rather than nine as in many other European countries. These pills must be taken in hospitals, unlike in other countries, where they are also available at clinics.
- Anti-abortion activists in Slovakia, Italy and the UK are also campaigning for abortions to be suspended during the pandemic.
According to the UN’s policy brief; in Latin America and the Caribbean, it is estimated that an additional 18 million women will lose regular access to modern contraceptives, given the current context of COVID-19 pandemics.
Yes, of course, all hospitals should focus on coronavirus pandemic right now but abortion is a time-sensitive issue and it is not just a headache.
Some countries find some solutions for this abortion issue:
- England, Wales, Ireland, and France have issued new rules to enable women to take medical abortion pills at home via telemedicine appointments.
- Germany made its mandatory counseling available online and by phone.
Violence Against Women
“Peace is not just the absence of war. Many women under lockdown for COVID-19 face violence where they should be safest: in their own homes.— António Guterres
As we all experience right now, private is way more political in the time of crisis.
The UN says the number of women facing abuse has increased in almost all countries — and these are just the reported cases.
According to UN Women’s COVID-19 and Ending Violence Against Women and Girls issue brief:
- In France, cases of domestic violence have increased by 30 percent since the lockdown on March 17.
- Helplines in Cyprus and Singapore have registered an increase in calls by 30 percent and 33 percent, respectively.
- In Argentina, emergency calls for domestic violence cases have increased by 25 percent since the lockdown started.
- In Canada, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, government authorities, women’s rights activists and civil society partners have indicated increasing reports of domestic violence during the crisis, and/or increased demand for emergency shelter.
“There is no single society where we’ve achieved equality between men and women, and so this pandemic is being layered on top of existing inequalities, and it’s exacerbating those inequalities,” — Nahla Valji, UN’s Senior Gender Adviser to the Executive Office of the Secretary General
There are many questions needed to be asked about the current coronavirus crisis and we need to ask them as soon as possible to overcome the tyranny of the urgent.
We should take into account the previous outbreaks’ effects on all genders. There is no doubt, the coronavirus pandemic will affect our lives more than any other outbreak. So, we need responses of this outbreak, includes all genders, on both national and global levels.
Take care & be safe!
