IJFAB Blog

Editor’s Note: This post comes to us from Guest Contributors Carina Fourie and Agomoni Ganguli-Mitra. Agomini has previously contributed work for IJFAB Blog on pregnancy as a superhuman feat. Prof. Fourie holds the Benjamin Rabinowitz Chair in Medical Ethics in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Washington. Prof. Ganguli-Mitra is Lecturer and Chancellor’s Fellow in Bioethics and Global Health Ethics, as well as co-Director of the Mason Institute for Medicine, Life Science, and the Law at the University of Edinburgh. This entry was written in late summer 2020; ironically, posting was delayed due to the disproportionate effects of COVID and COVID responses on the Editors of IJFAB Blog, both carrying increased personal and professional responsibilities.

An internet search of ‘gender inequality COVID-19’ can produce what seem to be contradictory results, even within the confines of a single newspaper’s articles. Take The Guardian: “Coronavirus hits men harder” from April 7 and “Coronavirus pandemic exacerbates inequalities for women” from April 11. Similarly, one of us emphasized in an interview, that the effects of the pandemic are more or less severe according to a person’s position in society, including their socio-economic status, or their gender. Due to women’s often subordinate and disadvantaged social positions, the pandemic is hitting them particularly hard. The first comment on the interview raised doubt about these claims, citing for example, the higher mortality rates for men from Covid-19. What are we to make of this? Are men or women worse off in the current pandemic?

An exploration of these questions helps to underline the problem with defining the moral aims of public health planning for pandemics as the protection and promotion of health exclusively, or the reduction of health disparities, or both – at least where ill-health is measured as the morbidity and mortality associated with the pandemic disease. Pandemic planning must take account of the effect of pandemics and responses to them on existing social injustices, and on how health can be affected both by the disease itself as well as by responses to the pandemic.[1]   

According to the BBC, 10 members of the indigenous Greater Andamanese tribe in India have tested positive for coronavirus in the past month. The Greater Andamanese only have 53 remaining members.

The Andamans Islands are home to a total of five Indigenous tribes: the Jarawas, North Sentinelese, Great Andamanese, Onge and Shompen, and local health officials say a main priority is keeping the coronavirus from spreading to other vulnerable tribes.

For centuries, Indigenous people across the globe have suffered and died from communicable diseases spread by colonizers and other world travelers. Indigenous people are vulnerable to disease due both to lack of immunity and because of adverse social conditions imposed upon them by Western colonizers.

In the Americas, coronavirus has also spread through indigenous communities, notably in tribes living along the Amazon as well as in the Navajo Nation. The centuries of violence these groups have suffered have resulted in increased malnutrition, illness, and trauma that make them more susceptible to contracting and dying from covid-19.

As coronavirus pandemic continues, we must collectively reckon with the historical and ongoing mistreatment of tribal Indigenous people worldwide.

It is perhaps well known that of the 27 members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, only two of them are women. A recent report from NPR shows that this is not a problem unique to the United States. Only 10 of the 31 members and advisers of the World Health Organization’s Emergency Committee on COVID-19 are women. The WHO-China joint mission on COVID-19 is comprised of only 20% women.

While men are more likely to die of coronavirus, women are at higher risk in other ways. Women make up 70% of the world’s healthcare workforce, putting them at higher risk of infection.

Countries are reporting higher numbers of reports of domestic violence as stay-at-home orders have confined women to tight quarters with abusive family members. And widespread shutdowns have disrupted women’s access to maternal health services. A study in The Lancet estimates, in its worst-case scenario, that nearly 60,000 additional women could die of maternal health complications over a six-month time period as a result of COVID-19.

With these facts in mind, it is morally imperative that women be equally represented in task forces shaping global and local policies with respect to the virus.

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