“Across the board, gender issues were ignored.”— Julia Smith, a health policy researcher at Simon Fraser University[In Her Words is available as a newsletter. As the coronavirus snakes its way around the world — canceling events, shuttering offices and suspending classes — some health experts worry that the crisis could put women at a disproportionate risk, exacerbating gender, social and economic fault lines. In other words: The roles that women have in society could place them squarely in the virus’s path (although some early studies of coronavirus cases in China suggest men have a higher death rate). Around the world, women make up a majority of health care workers, almost 70 percent according to some estimates, and most of them occupy nursing roles — on the front lines of efforts to combat and contain outbreaks of disease. In China’s Hubei Province, where the current coronavirus outbreak originated, about 90 percent of health care workers are women.

Source: New York Times March 12, 2020 23:15 UTC