Operation LASER, CAF assistance for the COVID-19 pandemic
Photo credit: CAF/DND
Esprit de Corps Magazine May 2020 // Volume 27 Issue 4
Let's Talk About Women in the Military – Column 14
By Military Woman
Question:
DOES COVID-19 IMPACT women differently than men?
Answer:
Yes, as per any crisis or emergency situation, women and men will be impacted differently. This is why biological sex and gender-based data collection and analysis are always important, but especially in disaster planning and response. In other words, decision and policy makers always should take into account biological sex, along with such other intersectional factors as age, gender identity, race, financial means, marital status, family status, sexual orientation, and disability status to best address everyone's varied needs.
In 2007, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a guidebook on "Addressing Sex and Gender in Epidemic – Prone Infectious Diseases." It emphasizes the importance of disaggregating all data by biological sex as a potential key to unlocking future disease treatments including vaccines.
With our understanding of how the SARS-CoV-2 virus causes the COVID-19 disease still changing by the hour, it appears that women are less severely affected by the physical illness than men. Experience and evidence suggest that both biological sex and gender identity are important considerations for why this and other differences may exist. Biological sex differences include different immune mounting responses thought to be related to genes located on the X chromosome; something women have two, or double the genes in, compared to men. Gendered differences include such lifestyle issues as smoking and alcohol consumption rates.
Another WHO recommendation highlighted the importance to keep good statistics around pregnancy during pandemics. It remains largely unknown what impact, if any, contracting COVID-19 will have on the health and wellbeing of the mother or on her pregnancy – hence the often conflicting advice on this topic during the current crisis.
Another gendered consideration unique to public health emergencies is the make-up of the emergency responders. Globally, over 90% of nurses, 70% of formal (paid) care providers and 40% of doctors are women, while concurrently holding only 25% of the health leadership positions. In Canada, women have stepped up and largely taken over the public health political and medical spheres. From military Veterans Dr. Bonnie Henry in British Columbia to Dr. Jennifer Russell in New Brunswick many Canadians now look forward to their daily COVID-19 medical updates.
The Canadian Forces Health Services (CFHS) branch includes trades such as medic, pharmacist, physiotherapist, x-ray, nurse, social worker, doctor, lab technician, dentist, dental technician and administrator. Most of these trades enjoy relatively high numbers of women. As such, when the military is called upon to support a pandemic, the soldiers serving on the medical "frontlines" have a good chance of being women. Their "armour" being their personal protective equipment or PPE-face shields, surgical masks, gowns, and gloves. As per all forms of armour, there can occasionally be gendered sizing issues especially for those with smaller head, body, and hand sizes.
There may also be gendered social impacts of COVID-19 on women. Whether it's caring for children no longer spending their days in school, for a sick spouse or for self-isolating elderly parents; women continue to perform the bulk of informal (unpaid) care duties. This "second shift" work expectation often means that our military women are doubly challenged during this type of crisis.
A secondary gendered impact from COVID-19 is the global spike in intimate partner violence (IPV) now being reporting. Any source of increased economic stressors, financial difficulties and alcohol consumption are known triggers for IPV. This pandemic checks off all those boxes and more, with its concurrent demand to not leave your house and if you must leave, to physically distance from others.
Gendered implication on the mental health impacts of quarantine and being cut off from your usual social supports should also be considered and studied.
The COVID-19 crisis offers Canada its first opportunity to apply a sex and gender-based analysis to a pandemic, and no longer treat women's experiences as a side issue to the main event. Ironically, it may only be through focusing on our sex and gendered differences, that pandemic researchers best stand to generate new knowledge and answers for the betterment of us all.
