At some point during this pandemic there was a discussion in media of at least most European and North American countries about the impact of the corona situation on women. Discussions are good, but here we are months into the crisis and those discussions haven't led to any plans (not to mention actions).
Let me point out some aspects:
First of all, just because men dies more than 2 times more often on COVID-19 than women and have severe course of the disease that does not mean women do not die on it and do not suffer when infected. [1,2,3] My fear is that this will support as always to test medicine mostly or only on men and women will be left with hope that what works for men will at least a bit in some cases work on them too... [4]
Secondly, there was huge carelessness about impact of the COVID-19 on pregnant women. Lack of evidence became a synonym of no-problem. When we knew that almost any other disease including the flu from the same family of viruses is putting women in the high risk group. First in August started to emerge doubts of this naive approach. The truth is we know very little but we know that there might be impact on fetus development in early stages of the pregnancy if the virus will get to the blood stream. COVID-19 can also cause blood clots that can impact a blood flow to the baby. Pregnant women due to their suppressed immune system response have very different way of going through the disease and might first severely suffer after the delivery. [5] Additionally comes the stress for a possible impact on fetus and eventually a baby, that significantly adds to already many emotional difficulties that women go though during the pregnancy. As well as issues connected with getting enough of oxygen while wearing a mask, that are obligatory even for pregnant women many public places as social awareness of a special situation for pregnant women were low or none. (Although it improved with time.)
The third point is the socioeconomic impact [6] on women generally as women were faster be be laid of and they are being slower to re-employ [7,8] and mothers specifically as women took bigger share of home-schooling and child care [9]. Housework was not distributed equally and a lot of women feel that this situation brought them to their physical, psychological and emotional limits. Current situation is increasing gender inequalities and pushing women back at least 20 years back in time.
The fourth issue is domestic violence. [10, 11] Yes, men can also be a victim of the domestic violence however up to any study conducted they are typically on the abuser side.
The fifth expectation of unachievable perfection so called 'having it all' haven't disappeared despite the world going through the crisis impacting almost every aspect of our everyday life and making it more challenging in this or other way. [12,13]
Where am I emotionally about this situation... well I am deep into feeling frustrated and annoyed. Why? Well, I am a women, I am a mother, and I am pregnant... I am quite impacted and I am stressed when I think about the upcoming second wave.
What could help me?
For example, 1) strict obligation of testing medicines on men and women cells in the early development and then including women equally into clinical trials 2) more testing on specific groups (here I refer both to pregnant women and children) even when there are no symptoms especially in situations of outbreaks (for example: quarantines in schools is not enough to learn something we need to test everyone we want to quarantine), 3) a sustainable thought the pandemic schooling and child care solutions.
References:
[1] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.00152/full
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1105512/coronavirus-covid-19-deaths-by-gender-germany/
[3] https://healthcare-in-europe.com/en/news/why-covid-19-hits-men-harder-than-women.html
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/apr/30/fda-clinical-trials-gender-gap-epa-nih-institute-of-medicine-cardiovascular-disease
[5] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/why-pregnant-women-face-special-risks-covid-19
[6] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/covid-19-gender-inequality-jobs-economy/
[7] https://time.com/5851352/women-labor-economy-coronavirus/
[8] https://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news20_e/info_note_covid_05aug20_e.pdf
[9] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/14/how-coronavirus-could-do-long-term-damage-to-womens-careers.html
[10] https://www.tum.de/nc/en/about-tum/news/press-releases/details/36059/
[11] https://www.un.org/en/coronavirus/un-supporting-%E2%80%98trapped%E2%80%99-domestic-violence-victims-during-covid-19-pandemic
[12] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-5107921/Pressure-women-makes-health-suffer.html
[13] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/14/perfect-girls-five-women-stories-mental-health
