A message on the International Women’s Day website reads “International Women’s Day is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity.” As a society, we must continually evaluate whether we are indeed “accelerating gender parity.” How do we celebrate International Women’s Day in 2022? How do we honor women, not just on women’s day, but every day? Are we working towards a world where women no longer have to fight for pay equity, paid maternal leave, affordable childcare, equitable maternal care across all racial groups and a plethora of other basic needs? Let’s put our words and social media proclamations into action.

 

The COVID-19 Impact

     While gender inequity was a problem before the COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic has further highlighted the challenges women face worldwide in the work force and at home. This UN report summarizes a lot of the gender inequities reinforced by the pandemic. Women earn less than men, have less access to social protections, are more likely to do unpaid work and domestic work and make up the majority of single-parent households. Even before the pandemic, women did almost 3 times as much unpaid and domestic work as men across the globe. As a result of the pandemic, domestic workloads increased and with children out of school, women spent more time caring for and teaching children at home, cleaning, preparing meals, shopping for the family etc. While some governments did attempt to address the economic impact of COVID-19, very little was done to address unpaid work, which was overwhelmingly done by women.

 

Decreased rates of employment in women

• Women’s employment decreased by 4.2% between 2019 and 2020 in comparison with men, which was a 3% drop in employment across the globe.
• In the United States, women have lost 5.4 million net jobs since February 2020.
• Rates of employment loss were even higher for Black and Hispanic women.
• Multiple studies have shown that women bear the brunt of the childcare duties and were forced to reduce their work hours, spend more time on domestic duties, and leave work to care for children.
• It is estimated that the gender poverty gaps will be exacerbated by 2030 with women aged 15 years and older making up the majority of the extreme poor.

Increased rates of sexual/physical violence towards women

     In addition to the economic and professional toll on women, many women also suffered sexual and/or physical violence with increased rates in the last year. With an increase in violence against women by an intimate partner, they also had fewer options given the lack of financial stability and limited access to social support. Across the globe, 243 million women and girls between the ages of 15 and 49 experienced sexual and or physical abuse in the last year by a partner.

 

Struggles of women in academic medicine

     On a more personal note, the struggles of women in academic medicine are also astounding. Gender bias is rampant throughout academic institutions and pervades all sectors of medicine. Multiple papers have been written on the setbacks that will be experienced by women as a result of the pandemic in a field where there was already a lot of gender bias and inequity:

• While there are more women than men enrolled in medical school, women account for only 16% of department chairs and deans in the US and 18% of hospital CEOs.
• Additionally, only 24% of full professors are women.
• Women in academic medicine make 90 cents for every dollar made by men in academic medicine.
• Workplace discrimination is also a problem with 51.3% of female physicians reporting workplace discrimination versus 31.2% of male physicians and more than one third of physician mothers reported maternal discrimination.
• Female physicians are also 5 times more likely to face obstacles pertaining to career advancement than their male counterparts.
• Across the world, women make up 70% of health workers and front-line responders yet even in the health sector, the gender pay gap is 28%, which is higher than the overall gender pay gap of 16%.
• With regard to academic research, fewer women submitted academic research to journals given an increase in domestic workload.
• Women early in their careers receive about $40,000 less than men in National Institutes of Health funding for their first grant.

Taking action

 

     We need to first and foremost strive to protect women’s health and well-being by ensuring access to sexual and reproductive health services. This measure includes addressing the health-specific vulnerabilities in underserved communities such as maternal care and taking into account the greater risks taken by health care workers, most of whom are women. We need to implement economic measures for women from underserved communities and re-allocate unpaid and domestic work.

 

   In the United States specifically, we need increased access to paid family leave, paid sick leave, and affordable and quality childcare. The United States is the only high income country without paid maternal leave and a high rate of maternal death due to pregnancy related issues. Black women are dually impacted as there are significant racial disparities across the board and they are 3 times more likely to die from a pregnancy related condition than White women.

 

     On a global level, it is imperative that unpaid care work is recognized and valued. Policies should be implemented to include social protections for unpaid caregivers, increased access to paid family leave and sick leave. We also need to address long standing inequalities such as the gender pay gap and the disparate division of labor at home.

 

  The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us just how precarious the systems we have in place are and how vulnerable populations are impacted the most. When we think about how to celebrate International Women’s Day in 2022, we need to reflect on how far we’ve come and how much we still have left to go and remind ourselves of the question of whether we have worked towards achieving gender parity.

 

References

https://www.internationalwomensday.com/

https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/Headquarters/Attachments/Sections/Library/Publications/2020/Gender-equality-in-the-wake-of-COVID-19-en.pdf

UN Women and UN DESA (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs). 2019. Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: The Gender Snapshot 2019. New York: UN Women and UN DESA.

https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—dgreports/—gender/documents/publication/wcms_814499.pdf

https://nwlc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/December-Jobs-Day.pdf

Caitlyn Collins and others, “COVID-19 and the gender gap in work hours,” Gender, Work and Organization (2020): 1–12, available at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gwao.12506.

Danielle Rhubart, “Gender Disparities in Caretaking during the COVID-19 Pandemic” (Syracuse, NY: Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion, 2020), available at https://lernercenter.syr.edu/2020/06/04/ds-18/

Matt Krentz and others, “Easing the COVID-19 Burden on Working Parents,” Boston Consulting Group, May 21, 2020, available at https://www.bcg.com/publications/2020/helping-working-parents-ease-the-burden-of-covid-19

UN Women. 2020e. “Covid-19 and Violence Against Women and Girls: Addressing the Shadow Pandemic.” Policy Brief no. 17. New York: UN Women. https://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2020/06/policy-brief-covid-19-and-violence-against-women-and-girls-addressing-the-shadow-pandemic

Woitowich NC, Jain S, Arora VM, Joffe H. COVID-19 Threatens Progress Toward Gender Equity Within Academic Medicine. Acad Med. 2021;96(6):813-816. doi:10.1097/ACM.0000000000003782

Association of American Medical Colleges. U.S. Medical School Faculty, 2017 (Table C: Department Chairs by Department, Sex, and Race/Ethnicity, 2017). https://www.aamc.org/data-reports/faculty-institutions/interactive-data/2017-us-medical-school-faculty.

Association of American Medical Colleges. U.S. Medical School Faculty, 2017 (Table 9: U.S. Medical School Faculty by Sex and Rank, 2017). https://www.aamc.org/data-reports/faculty-institutions/interactive-data/2017-us-medical-school-faculty.

Coombs AA ,  King RK . Workplace discrimination: experiences of practicing physicians. J Natl Med Assoc. 2005;97:467-77. [PMID: 15868767]

Adesoye T ,  Mangurian C ,  Choo EK ,  Girgis C ,  Sabry-Elnaggar H ,  Linos E ; Physician Moms Group Study Group. Perceived discrimination experienced by physician mothers and desired workplace changes: a cross-sectional survey. JAMA Intern Med. 2017;177:1033-6. [PMID: 28492824] doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2017.1394

Kitchener C. Women academics submitting fewer papers to journals during coronavirus. The Lily. https://www.thelily.com/women-academics-seem-to-be-submitting-fewer-papers-during-coronavirus-never-seen-anything-like-it-says-one-editor. Published April 24, 2020 Accessed April 27, 2020 [Google Scholar]8. Vincent-Lamarre P, Sugimoto C, Lariviere V. The decline of women’s research production during the coronavirus pandemic. Nature Index. https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/decline-women-scientist-research-publishing-production-coronavirus-pandemic. Published May 19, 2020 Accessed May 21, 2020 [Google Scholar]

Oliveira DFM, Ma Y, Woodruff TK, Uzzi B. Comparison of National Institutes of Health grant amounts to first-time male and female principal investigators. JAMA. 2019; 321:898–900