Analysing the intersection between health emergencies and abortion during Zika in Brazil, El Salvador and Colombia

Wenham, Clare; Abagaro, Camila Pereira; Arévalo, Amaral Palevi Gómez; Coast, Ernestina; Corrêa, Sônia; Cuellar, Katherine; Leone, Tiziana; Valongueiro, Sandra

doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113671

Cited by 11 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 67 publications

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“…This reflects the UK government's position that an effective response to COVID is reliant on individual responsibility, rather than social and structural barriers. What is so disappointing is that this narrow frame has already been shown to neglect the socio-economic consequences of outbreaks, particularly those affecting women [47,48]. Indeed, a parliamentary review of SAGE convened for the 2014-16 West Africa Ebola outbreak reported that 'many of our witnesses emphasised that … ensuring that the membership of SAGE included social scientists, were [sic] extremely important in controlling [the] outbreak' but did not mention their importance in understanding and mitigating the harmful downstream impacts of public health interventions [49].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While being inconsistent in regard to the risk of COVID-19 infections to the professions discussed above, SAGE has consistently acknowledged that some sectors pose a greater risk of COVID-19 infection. These are meat packing, fish processing, supermarkets [48], events and hospitality [52], recreation and arts [53], close personal services [57], health and social care [59], and transport and emergency services [69]. Alongside this, SAGE also identified other characteristics of employment that may expose individuals to greater risk: inability to work at home, self-employed, on zero-hours contracts, high contact occupations, low pay, and ineligibility for statutory sick pay [37,38,39,57].…”

Section: Employment Sectorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Why we Need a Gender Advisor on SAGE

Wenham¹,

Herten-Crabb

2021

LSE Public Policy Review

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The UK government has largely failed to consider gender in its COVID-19 response, despite the many and varied differential impacts of policy interventions on women and men. Since government policy is informed by the advice ministers receive, we sought to understand whether and how gender had been considered by the UK government's COVID-19 Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE). This paper uses two forms of policy analysis to assess 73 SAGE meeting minutes and background documents for 1) the explicit references to sex and/or gender, and 2) references to issues evidenced in the literature to be gendered, to understand whether the gendered implications of policy were considered. We find that the acknowledgement of the gendered dynamics of particular issues, such as school closures and feminised (or masculinised) employment sectors, were largely absent in SAGE meeting minutes and that explicit references to women were largely of a biological (sex) nature, rather than social (gender). Over time we saw increased references to the gendered impacts of policy in meeting background documents, though these references largely reproduced gendered stereotypes and roles rather than actively engaging with the gender issues. However, not all blame can be put at the feet of SAGE members, who did show awareness of equity issues and were predominantly epidemiologists and behavioural scientists likely untrained in gender analysis. SAGE members are selected based on the government's framing of the type of emergency at hand, and COVID-19 has been treated by the government as a an epidemiological emergency, rather than a social, political and economic one. We argue that reframing emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic in a more holistic way enables us to redefine the scientific advice deemed necessary for SAGE membership, and facilitates the inclusion of gender advisors to mitigate the downstream gendered impacts of nonpharmaceutical interventions associated with the government's COVID-19 response.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Employment Sectorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why we Need a Gender Advisor on SAGE

Wenham¹,

Herten-Crabb

2021

LSE Public Policy Review

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“…Structural gender inequities in Central and South America are well documented, and women often are not in control of their reproductive decisions [ 17 ]. Populations most affected by ZIKV often had limited access to reproductive health services, such as antenatal care, contraception counselling, and services -including emergency contraception-, safe abortion, and post-abortion care [ 28 , 29 ]. Many countries affected by ZIKV still have restrictive abortion laws, making safe abortion completely illegal or very difficult to access [ 29 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Populations most affected by ZIKV often had limited access to reproductive health services, such as antenatal care, contraception counselling, and services -including emergency contraception-, safe abortion, and post-abortion care [ 28 , 29 ]. Many countries affected by ZIKV still have restrictive abortion laws, making safe abortion completely illegal or very difficult to access [ 29 ]. Furthermore, the epidemic did not change the voluntary abortion landscape in any relevant way.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“One feels anger to know there is no one to help us!”. Perceptions of mothers of children with Zika virus-associated microcephaly in Caribbean Colombia: A qualitative study

et al. 2022

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Background The epidemic of Zika virus (ZIKV) was associated with a sudden and unprecedented increase in infants born with microcephaly. Colombia was the second most affected country by the epidemic in the Americas. Primary caregivers of children with ZIKV-associated microcephaly, their mothers mainly, were at higher risk of suffering anxiety and depression. Often, these women were stigmatized and abandoned by their partners, relatives, and communities. Methodology/Principal findings This study aimed to understand the perceptions about ZIKV infection among mothers of children born with microcephaly during the ZIKV epidemic in Caribbean Colombia, and the barriers and facilitators affecting child health follow-up. An exploratory qualitative study, based on Phenomenology and Grounded Theory, was conducted in Caribbean Colombia. Data were collected through In-Depth Interviews (IDI) from women who delivered a baby with microcephaly during the ZIKV epidemic at Clínica Salud Social, Sincelejo, Sucre District (N = 11). The themes that emerged during the interviews included experiences from their lives before pregnancy; knowledge about ZIKV; experiences and perceptions when diagnosed; considering a possible termination of pregnancy, and children’s clinical follow-up. In some cases, women reported having been told they were having a baby with microcephaly but decided not to terminate the pregnancy; while in other cases, women found out about their newborn’s microcephaly condition only at birth. The main barriers encountered by participants during children’s follow-up included the lack of psychosocial and economic support, the stigmatization and abandonment by some partners and relatives, and the frustration of seeing the impaired development of their children. Conclusions This study contributed to identifying the social, medical, psychological, and economic needs of families with children affected by the ZIKV epidemic. Commitment and action by local and national governments, and international bodies, is required to ensure sustained and quality health services by affected children and their families.

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“…However, little has been investigated about the gender effect and the need to employ tailored solutions for women. A number of papers report experiences about women's health, including abortion (Vázquez-Quesada et al, 2020;Wenham et al, 2021), diabetes (Amgarth-duff et al, 2019), and oncology (Bednarova et al, 2020;Miceli et al, 2019). Some early studies conducted before the pandemic stressed that women seem to engage more with online and e-health tools than male patients (Escoffery, 2018;Reed et al, 2020).…”

Section: Female Patients and Female Workers During The Covid-19 Pandemicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender Diversity and Resilience in Firms During COVID-19 Pandemic

Cavallini

Iacoviello

Ricci

2022

SIDREA Series in Accounting and Business Administration

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This is the official book series of SIDREA -the Italian Society of Accounting and Business Administration. This book series is provided with a wide Scientific Committee composed of Academics by SIDREA. It publishes contributions (monographs, edited volumes and proceedings) as a result of the double blind review process by the SIDREA's thematic research groups, operating at the national and international levels. Particularly, the series aims to disseminate specialized findings on several topicsclassical and cutting-edge alikethat are currently being discussed by the accounting and business administration communities. The series authors are respected researchers and professors in the fields of business valuation; governance and internal control; financial accounting; public accounting; management control; gender; turnaround predictive models; non-financial disclosure; intellectual capital, smart technologies, and digitalization; and university governance and performance measurement.More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/16571

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Analysing the intersection between health emergencies and abortion during Zika in Brazil, El Salvador and Colombia

Cited by 11 publications

References 67 publications

Why we Need a Gender Advisor on SAGE

Why we Need a Gender Advisor on SAGE

“One feels anger to know there is no one to help us!”. Perceptions of mothers of children with Zika virus-associated microcephaly in Caribbean Colombia: A qualitative study

Gender Diversity and Resilience in Firms During COVID-19 Pandemic

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