Question

contribution of women during covid-19
write in 500 words​

Answer 1

Answer: The COVID‑19 pandemic is harming health, social and economic well-being worldwide, with women at the centre. First and foremost, women are leading the health response: women make up almost 70% of the health care workforce, exposing them to a greater risk of infection. At the same time, women are also shouldering much of the burden at home, given school and child care facility closures and longstanding gender inequalities in unpaid work. Women also face high risks of job and income loss, and face increased risks of violence, exploitation, abuse or harassment during times of crisis and quarantine.

Policy responses must be immediate, and they must account for women’s concerns. Governments should consider adopting emergency measures to help parents manage work and caring responsibilities, reinforcing and extending income support measures, expanding support for small businesses and the self-employed, and improving measure to help women victims of violence. Fundamentally, all policy responses to the crisis must embed a gender lens and account for women’s unique needs, responsibilities and perspectives.

Women are playing a key role in the health care response to the COVID‑19 crisis. Women constitute an estimated two-thirds of the health workforce worldwide, and while globally they are under-represented among physicians, dentists and pharmacists, they make up around 85% of nurses and midwives in the 104 countries for which data are available (Boniol et al., 2019[2]). In OECD countries, almost half of doctors are now women (OECD, 2019[3]). Women also make up the overwhelming majority of the long-term care (LTC) workforce – just over 90%, on average across OECD countries (Figure 1). Despite the fact that the majority of the health care workforce is female, women still make up only a minority of senior or leadership positions in health (Downs et al., 2014[4]; Boniol et al., 2019[2]).