By Leta Hong Fincher, for CNN 04/16/20

In this article, Fincher discusses how the Coronavirus pandemic is being handled successfully in countries led by women. While there are of course other factors that contribute to the success of its handling in these countries, many have noted the obvious commonality between many of these countries: they are all led by women. The three countries highlighted in the article are Taiwan, Germany, and New Zealand, all multi-party democracies with high levels of public trust in their governments. That they are located in different regions of the world proves significant as they represent diverse areas that have been affected by the Coronavirus differently. Looking at these three countries offers us examples from Europe, Asia, and the South Pacific. All three countries have been successful in containing the virus through early, scientific intervention. Specifically, they have used widespread testing, facilitated easy access to quality medical treatment, used aggressive contact tracing and imposed tough restrictions on social gatherings. While there are countries who have been successful in managing the virus, there are also many led by men where the virus has spread rapidly in comparison to these women-led countries.

Many countries led by incompetent, science-denialist men have led to catastrophic coronavirus outbreaks.

For example, the United States has become the epicenter of the virus outbreak led by President Trump, whose leadership style during the handling of this virus has consisted of a sort of hyper-masculine alpha-dog trying to out-do scientists and strong-arm experts to adjust their recommendations. The virus was similarly mishandled in the UK, led by Prime Minister Boris Johnson who also did not heed warnings seriously enough and routinely dismissed the severity of the situation during the early days of the outbreak as Trump did. And of course, the virus’ starting point in China was certainly mismanaged by President Xi Jinping, who likewise did not take the virus’ seriousness fully and allowed five million people to leave Wuhan before finally putting the city under lockdown only once he was proved wrong as these other leaders were.

While it is too early to determine who is definitively more successful in handling the virus as it is an ongoing crisis around the world, the evidence so far has been a very positive showing for women leaders, even as they make up only 7% of world leaders. Their handling of the crisis has pushed back on the typical gender stereotypes and criticisms women face when running for leadership or decision-making positions: that they may not be dependable in a crisis, may handle difficult situations with emotional decision-making, and that they may not have the toughness to make tough calls. These women leaders have been lauded not only for their reliance on science and rational thinking based on the recommendations of experts, but also for their hard-line stances governing social life in their countries that have successfully limited the spread of the virus.

Yet, on January 1, 2020 only 10 of 152 elected heads of state were women, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the United Nations — and men made up 75% of parliamentarians, 73% of managerial decision-makers and 76% of the people in mainstream news media.

That women are squeezed into only one quarter — 25% — of physical spaces where critical decisions are made as well as the media platforms that tell stories about our lives is not enough. While this is something all advocates for gender equality would say has always been the case, the call for more equitable gender representation in these spaces now has even greater evidence to back up these claims.

At the very least, the disproportionate number of women leaders succeeding in controlling this pandemic — so far — should show us that gender equality is critical to global public health and international security.

While critics could argue that their being women was not the main factor determining their success in handling the pandemic, that these women all succeeded helps squash the potential arguments about their ability to lead and handle crises that are all too frequent in societal discourse.

Pandemics affect men and women differently.

By Helen Lewis March 19, 2020

In her article, Lewis discusses the effects of pandemics through a gendered perspective, illustrating how they impact men and women differently and how long-lasting these impacts can be even after the pandemic has passed. As has been pointed out by others during this crisis, a pandemic highlights existing inequalities between socio-economic statuses, educational privilege, job types, urban versus rural housing, etc. But another area of inequality that gets brought to the forefront is gendered caregiving responsibilities and income disparities between men and women.

The coronavirus smashes up the bargain that so many dual-earner couples have made in the developed world: We can both work, because someone else is looking after our children. Instead, couples will have to decide which one of them takes the hit.

The decision of who takes the hit on responsibilities is one based on societal norms as well as practical economic concerns regarding income and flexibility. Both of these factors contribute to women more often than not being selected as the one in heterosexual couples taking on more caregiving responsibilities for children being schooled from home. This is not just because of misogynistic norms surrounding gender roles in the household, though. It is largely because of the make-up of how many women versus men work part-time, and the economic stress of the pandemic on households has many couples making these decisions based on pragmatism.

According to the British government’s figures, 40 percent of employed women work part-time, compared with only 13 percent of men. In heterosexual relationships, women are more likely to be the lower earners, meaning their jobs are considered a lower priority when disruptions come along. And this particular disruption could last months, rather than weeks. Some women’s lifetime earnings will never recover.

For single-parent households, which are disproportionately female, this balancing between caregiving responsibilities while keeping up financially is even more difficult. The negative impacts on single-family households financially can be long-lasting and stark, which affects women’s economic outlook significantly. For both single and married women, hits on income take longer to recover for women versus men according to historical data taken from West Africa during and after the Ebola crisis.

The author pointed out past pandemics — the Ebola crisis in three African countries in 2014; Zika in 2015–6; and recent outbreaks of SARS, swine flu, and bird flu — and some of the gendered effects they had on society, as well as the lasting impacts on gender equality. Specifically, pandemics result in a distortion of the health system as resources are diverted from other causes towards the crisis. Healthcare issues that disproportionately affect women — such as prenatal care and childbirth — are deprioritized, and women pay the price for this. One staggering account was in Sierra Leone, one of the countries most impacted by the Ebola virus:

From 2013 to 2016, during the outbreak, more women died of obstetric complications than the infectious disease itself. But these deaths, like the unnoticed caring labor on which the modern economy runs, attract less attention than the immediate problems generated by an epidemic. These deaths are taken for granted.

There are also other consequences of pandemics that impact women on a larger scale than men that are more likely to be overlooked in popular media when addressing the myriad of effects a pandemic has on society. During the Ebola epidemic, domestic and sexual violence rose. While domestic and sexual violence do affect men as well, we know from historical and contemporary data that women are impacted on a greater level. Therefore, the author presents an interesting argument that the response to the Coronavirus should not be simply gender-neutral, because it impacts men and women differently, as evidence from the Ebola and Zika crises support. In rich and poor countries alike, experts predict that domestic-violence rates will rise during lockdown periods. This is because triggers for violence in the home — stress, alcohol consumption, and financial difficulties — are heightened by these quarantine measures being imposed around the world. Not only this, but victims of domestic violence will have fewer outlets to escape their perpetrators do to lockdowns:

The British charity Women’s Aid said in a statement that it was “concerned that social distancing and self-isolation will be used as a tool of coercive and controlling behaviour by perpetrators, and will shut down routes to safety and support.”

In light of this, many are calling for policy-makers to adjust their response so that it is gendered and is better apt to address these issues. Further, these advocates argue that this would also provide an opportunity to gather useful data stratified demographically for our society that would helpfully inform future responses to health crises like the one we are currently experiencing. Despite the historical evidence to back up their compelling argument, however, it still remains to be seen whether policy-makers will adjust their response in light of the gendered distortions in our healthcare system, caregiving responsibilities, and economic outlook.

Coronavirus isn’t transphobic. But America’s economic and health systems are.

Here’s how the pandemic could further devastate trans people.

By: Katelyn Burns

In this article, Burns discusses how the Coronavirus pandemic is affecting trans people and exacerbating the economic hardship so many trans people across the country already faced before the pandemic struck. Just like so many others across America, savings have become hugely important during this time and this crisis has highlighted how financially vulnerable much our society is given low rates of saving and emergency, or “rainy day”, funds. But this issue is more acute for the trans community, who are left with even lower amounts of saving because of the discrimination they face on a regular basis when trying to find work. The statistics are staggering for how many trans people face poverty, unemployment, and discrimination.

According to data from the National Center for Transgender Equality, three-quarters of all of trans people have experienced discrimination on the basis of their gender identity at work, and more than one in four have been fired from their jobs for being trans. And that discrimination only compounds when trans people have other intersecting identities — like being a person of color, or femme-presenting, or both.

Therefore, when the pandemic struck leaving so many people without jobs, trans people continue to suffer financially even more than the rest of the population during this pandemic because they are less likely to have money saved as a result of previous employment discrimination. Not only does the pandemic heighten the financial underprivileged trans people face because of transphobia, but it also has highlighted the issues trans people face in our healthcare system. Because healthcare is largely tied to employment in the United States and many trans people face unemployment as a result of discrimination, trans people are generally less likely to have health insurance than their peers. Not only this, but trans people also have a more difficult time signing up for state health insurance because many states require a credit score on the form. Dice Redden, a social worker case manager in Southern California, described how our healthcare system has failed trans people as a result.

“They can’t get access to it because it requires a credit score…they don’t have a credit score because they can’t get a co-signer because they don’t have a parent. How are you trying to call it universal health care if the kids who need it the most don’t have access to it? And that’s trans and nonbinary kids who got kicked out of their house.”

I found this part of the article especially striking and educative on the experience of trans people in our healthcare system, a discriminatory one with a history of being deprioritized that the Coronavirus pandemic has only exacerbated. The article also stated that the US Department of Health released a bulletin specifically outlining that discrimination because of disability is illegal in response to concerns that rationing of medical supplies and services would discriminate against disabled people. However, while several forms of discrimination were specifically defined in the bulletin, notably absent, was discrimination on the basis of gender identity, leaving trans and non-binary people at greater risk of discrimination in medical treatment during the pandemic.

While advocates have already begun petitioning to protect trans people during this crisis, I find it interesting what little media attention this has gotten, at least from my personal view. The news is on for the greater part of the day in my house, yet I have not heard anything about it. This is concerning but unsurprising given the transphobia we see in our society, and I think it exemplifies it in the opposite way we typically see it manifest itself. While typically transphobia shows itself in the portrayals of trans people in the media, here we see it showing itself in the complete lack of attention and voice the media is choosing to give the trans community during this crisis.

As medical rationing becomes a reality, “quality of life” measures threaten disabled people like me.

By: Alice Wong 04/04/20

In this Vox article, Alice Wong discusses her experience as an Asian American disabled person living through the Coronavirus pandemic. She discusses how in a world that has become so destabilized and disrupted, for those with physical and mental disabilities are skilled in adapting to a world that was never designed for them in the first place. She discusses the manifestation of the ableism our readings for this week discussed and offered a compelling example of how disabled people, and women, in particular, are positioned in society’s view.

I am tethered to and embedded with a number of things that keep me alive: a power wheelchair, a non-invasive ventilator that is connected to my chair’s battery, a mask that goes over my nose attached to a tube, metal rods fused to my spine. How I sound, move, and look elicits pity and discomfort by many in public. This is the norm.

As her quote above demonstrates, she regularly faces the consequences of our society’s stereotypical views of the body and others’ reactions to her disability. The pity and discomfort she feels reflects our society’s ableism and rocky history interacting with those with disabilities.

Already, disability rights groups have filed complaints that some states, such as Alabama and Washington, are making triage recommendations that discriminate against people with disabilities. While the federal health department’s Office of Civil Rights released a bulletin on non-discrimination during the pandemic, I’m still worried. The ethical frameworks for rationing often put people like me at the bottom of the list.

As doctors face difficult decisions regarding rationing of medical supplies and services, those with disabilities are at risk. Arguments regarding “quality of life” inherently put those with disabilities in a position that assumes they already have a lesser quality of life because of their disabilities.

There is a significant body of empirical evidence showing that there is a substantial gap between a disabled person’s self-assessment and how their quality of life is judged by folks that have never experienced their disability.

This is because those assessing “quality of life” and forming conclusions regarding their assessment for disabled members of our society are largely those who do not know about nor service those with disabilities. Further, the debates currently happening regarding health care rationing unveil how our society devalues vulnerable populations and the discrimination they are at risk of facing during this pandemic.

Eugenics isn’t a relic from World War II; it’s alive today, embedded in our culture, policies, and practices. It is imperative that experts and decision-makers include and collaborate with communities disproportionately impacted by systemic medical racism, ageism, and ableism, among other biases.

I found this article very eye-opening and illustrative of the impacts our society’s views towards those with disabilities have on their level of care and valuation in the current pandemic. Those with disabilities are at high risk of discrimination and being left behind during this pandemic, as the issues of medical supply rationing uncover our society’s inherent ableism and positioning of disabled bodies.

By Congresswoman Gwen Moore, Representative of Wisconsin’s 4th District

In her article, Representative Moore tells her story through poverty to the United States Congress and how she benefitted from the welfare programs that are consistently under attack in American popular culture. As Nadasen’s article discussed, stereotypes and images of black women as “welfare queens” have reinscribed racial domination in the popular and political discourse. Moore attempts to take back this derogatory label as we saw other men and women have in the black community with other names and labels to redefine its meaning, in hopes of shifting their impact on black Americans from severe insult to empowerment.

You can call me a welfare queen. I proudly wear the crown. To me, a welfare queen is a woman who defies the odds against her to reign over her destiny and find a path out of poverty.

She goes on to discuss how welfare served to level the playing field for her as it does for so many others struggling in America’s unfair, capitalist society. This is its primary purpose, she argues, and one which she wishes to properly frame the narrative around in contrast to the image of laziness neglect, and moral depravity that continue to dominate our society’s popular conception of welfare along racial and gender lines from the 1960s.

The misguided notion that 38 million people living in poverty can simply “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” with no government support is ludicrous and unfair.

Much of the push-back surrounding expanding welfare programs to benefit the poor in our country is due to how it has been racialized in the popular image and stereotypes have caused reforms that now push single mothers into the workforce more rather than supporting their roles as mothers raising their children. I found Moore’s story especially inspiring and interesting in conjunction with the video about the Reagan administration and how they were able to use the story of one black woman who scammed the system to form the image of every welfare recipient in the public’s mind. They were able to use one woman to create this much popular protest and resentment around welfare programs, which raises a somewhat obvious question in my mind. If it only takes one woman’s story to do so, couldn’t we use someone like Moore’s success story to reshape the narrative as an example of how welfare programs help individuals succeed while ridding our popular culture of the racist and misogynistic image of the “welfare queen?”

In this Washington Post article, Samantha Schmidt discusses how sex education is changing in schools to include education surrounding consent in an attempt to address these issues during children’s formative years rather than once they get to university. Specifically, the article discusses this education on consent in middle schools as students are going through puberty and some are having their first romantic interactions with peers, whether physically intimate or not.

Educators across the country have said that waiting until college is too late to prevent sexual violence.

The author tells the story of a suburban Maryland middle school, as health teacher Courtney Marcoux introduces the topic of consent to her students in a variety of ways. This is not unique to Hallie Wells Middle School, as the commonly-referred to “#MeToo era” is increasingly concerned with introducing consent to children at younger ages and formalizing this through school programs. Just months after allegations against Harvey Weinstein sparked a nationwide call for greater action against sexual assault and consent, Maryland passed a bill in 2018 requiring that sex education in schools include lessons on consent.

During Marcoux’s lesson on consent, the health teacher showed students a photo of a football player with a quote next to it: “I’m going to start tackling guys in football jerseys and saying, ‘Look what he’s wearing. He was asking for it.’ ” This sparked discussion amongst her class, as the students were confused and dumbfounded as to why someone could just assume someone wearing a football jersey wants to be tackled in the middle of the street. Marcoux responded with an important statement to the students about how we see this manifest itself in our society with regard to sexual assault and victim-blaming.

“We cannot assume that somebody wants to do something because of what they’re wearing, because maybe they were flirting, because they did it once before,” Marcoux told the class. “We cannot make these assumptions.”

This is significant given our discussions in class this week surrounding the issues of sexual assault, victim-blaming, and consent. As the article discusses, many are calling for earlier education with children in teaching them about consent before they get to university, where these issues are so prevalent. Teaching children to own their bodies and respect their peers’ bodies is a crucial component of changing our society’s attitudes towards these issues and hopefully changing the startling statistics of how many are negatively impacted by these issues. Doing so is not just for the benefit of women, but for our society as a whole.

By Veeksha Vagmita

03/07/19

In this article, the author explores the issues women face with regard to motherhood in a world where women still bear a greater burden of social expectations even if the work in parenting is increasingly shared with fathers. This is because, despite progress toward the more equitable distribution of responsibilities between parents, the historical legacy of motherhood is so entrenched in our society that it continues to affect perceptions of motherhood. As Vagmita notes, the classic division of labor – men looking after production and women entrusted with reproduction – confines mothering to the domestic realm, turning it into a private, non-political activity. The issues mothers face are therefore confined to the private sphere and are not given a platform to voice themselves in public or political discussions. This is where Matricentric Feminism seeks to find a seat at the table and support in the academic feminist community as a legitimate cause requiring representation in the name of social justice and human fulfillment.

Matricentric feminism looks at the intersection of gender and motherhood. It recognises mothers as a distinct and vulnerable category. Women, as long as they are ‘unencumbered’, have much more mobility and opportunity than they had in the past. However, once they become mothers, gendered patterns reassert themselves in relationships and the “egalitarian office party is over” (O’Reilly).

Matricentric feminism’s aim is not to idealize or sentimentalize mothers. Rather, it aims to empower mothers and grant them a say in the social scheme of things. As we have discussed in class and the article points out, our society tends to value mothers for their silent endurance, which leads to a lack of influence in political decisions or public values. Treating the activity of mothering with reverence and awe will not achieve the amount of progress towards a more egalitarian society that our society needs. To do this, we need to attach value to it and recognize the true complexity of the task. This brings up another issue we discussed in class that the article explores: the ambiguity surrounding how to be a “good mother.” Our stereotype of the ‘ideal mother’ is dependent on the image of the “bad mother.” Mothers face many challenges to fulfilling this stereotype of the “good mother” as a result, and we see mom-blaming and mom guilt affecting working and stay-at-home moms alike as they try to delicately balance being present in their children’s upbringing while not being overbearing as to stunt this development. Part of how we can combat this issue involves greater involvement by fathers in heterosexual parenting arrangements.

Non-sexist family arrangements mean better role models for children. Women’s disproportionate involvement in primary caregiving has been linked to male misogyny and compulsive masculinity. With more hands-on fathers, acting as maternal figures and not as law-givers within families, masculinity may be rid of some of its present toxicity.

Adjusting parenting arrangements so that parenting responsibilities and expectations don’t fall so disproportionately on mothers is a necessary starting point to changing our societal views of motherhood and the pressures it puts on women. While the historical legacy of misogyny and patriarchy with regard to gendered views of mothering is strong and difficult to overcome, making progress towards changing these structures and expectations is essential for women’s equality in the public and domestic spheres alike.