Tag: gender

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New Publication: Threat not solution: gender, global health security and COVID-19

By Sophie Harman

Abstract:

COVID-19 had led to long overdue visibility of the gendered determinants and impacts of health emergencies and global health security. This article explores why gender was neglected in previous health emergencies, what led to change in visibility of gender issues during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the implications of such change for understanding the relationship between gender and global health security. The article explores the question of neglect by drawing on original research into the 2014–16 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, its aftermath and implications for future pandemic preparedness. The article then looks in detail at the research efforts, funding, epistemic community activism and impact of COVID-19 to explain why gender received high profile political attention and acknowledgment. The article argues that the change in visibility, research and advocacy around gender equality during the COVID-19 outbreak does not demonstrate an advancement in gender equality in global health. To the contrary, such visibility reinforces the inherent problems of global health security evident in the 2014–16 Ebola outbreak that create and reproduce binaries of neglect and visibility, and hierarchies of the global health issues that matter, the people that matter and the women that matter. What unites neglect and visibility of gender in global health security is that gender is understood as solution rather than threat. Combined these factors make gender equality incompatible with global health security.

To read the article, please see https://academic.oup.com/ia/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ia/iiab012/6180992

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New Research: QMUL’s Sophie Harman co-authors a new article for ISQ about reproductive health

Professor Sophie Harman and her co-author, Professor Sarah Davies of Griffith University (Australia) have co-authored an article for International Studies Quarterly, titled “Securing Reproductive Health: A Matter of International Peace and Security”

https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqaa020

Abstract: Failure to access reproductive health care is a threat to the security of women around the world. This article offers three propositions to recognize reproductive health as a matter of international peace and security. The first is to recognize current processes of advancement and backlash politics as a silent security dilemma that undermines rights, justice, and public health based approaches to reproductive health. The second is to draw on the human security origins of global health security to reorient the concept away from protecting states to protecting individuals. Finally, a feminist approach to security is incomplete without recognising reproductive health as a threat to women’s security and as a barrier to their participation in international peace and security processes. Reproductive health is central to effective peacebuilding yet remains curiously absent from the international peace and security discourse. We discuss how and why reproductive security should become integrated within the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda in order to hold states to account for reproductive health access. Reproductive security defines the urgency and threat of restricted reproductive health care to the lives of women, health-care providers, and sustained international peace and security.

The article can be found at https://academic.oup.com/isq/article/64/2/277/5819129

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New Research: QMUL’s Sophie Harman co-authors a new article for Nature about the lessons of past pandemics about the effect on women

The social and economic impacts of COVID-19 fall harder on women than on men. Governments need to gather data and target policy to keep all citizens equally safe, sheltered and secure.

Authors/editor(s): Clare Wenham, Julia Smith, Sara E. Davies, Huiyun Feng, Karen A. Grépin, Sophie Harman, Asha Herten-Crabb & Rosemary Morgan

Drawing on the experience of past pandemics new article in the journal Nature argues that

“Women are affected more than men by the social and economic effects of infectious-disease outbreaks. They bear the brunt of care responsibilities as schools close and family members fall ill. They are at greater risk of domestic violence and are disproportionately disadvantaged by reduced access to sexual- and reproductive-health services. Because women are more likely than men to have fewer hours of employed work and be on insecure or zero-hour contracts, they are more affected by job losses in times of economic instability.”

The article can be found at https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02006-z

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New Research: QMUL’s Sophie Harman co-authors a new article for UNWomen on COVID and gender equality

Authors/editor(s): Ginette Azcona, Antra Bhatt, Sara Davies, Sophie Harman, Julia Smith, and Clare Wenham

Original URL: https://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2020/07/spotlight-on-gender-covid-19-and-the-sdgs

Sophie is Professor of International Politics and a BAFTA-nominated film producer. She is interested in visual method and the politics of seeing, global health politics, African agency, and the politics of conspicuously invisible women. Her research has reflected these interests through projects on Global Health Governance, the World Bank and HIV/AIDS, partnerships in health in Africa, the 2014/15 Ebola response, the governance of HIV/AIDS, and her recent film project, Pili. These interests have informed her teaching on the modules Global Health Politics, Africa and International Relations, and Global Governance.

COVID-19 has been declared a public health emergency of international concern and a global pandemic by the World Health Organization. This global threat to health security underscores the urgent need to accelerate progress on achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3 and the need to massively scale up international cooperation to deliver on SDG 3. It also reveals what is less obvious, but no less urgent: how health emergencies such as COVID-19, and the response to them, can exacerbate gender inequality and derail hard-won progress not only on SDG 3 but on all the SDGs.

This paper presents the latest evidence on the gendered impact of the pandemic, highlights potential and emerging trends, and reflects on the long-term impact of the crisis on the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The paper begins by presenting key facts and figures relating to the gendered impacts of COVID-19 followed by reflecting on the health impacts of COVID-19 on SDG 3 targets. Then, the paper explores the socioeconomic and political implications of COVID-19 on women and gender across five of the Goals: SDG 1 (poverty), 4 (quality education), 5 (gender equality), 8 (decent work and economic growth), and 10 (reduced inequalities).

The paper concludes by outlining policy priorities drawn from the evidence presented.

This paper is part of the “Spotlight on the SDGs” series.

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Bibliographic information

Subject area(s): 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development; COVID-19; Gender equality and women’s empowerment; Gender statistics; Health; Sex-disaggregated data; Sexual and reproductive health and rights; Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)