Experts are calling on authorities to consider the sex and gender effects of the Covid-19 outbreak, which is having a huge impact on female workers.<\/p>\n
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Article by Emanuela Zuccal\u00e0 — EL PA\u00cdS<\/a><\/p>\n To protect herself from contracting the coronavirus, Dr. Adele Teodoro, a gynecologist in private practice in Milan, could have chosen to cancel her patients\u2019 appointments and\u00a0go into quarantine<\/a>\u00a0like most people in Italy. Instead, she has continued to work. \u201cI haven\u2019t had the courage to abandon my pregnant patients,\u201d she says. \u201cWe have to do check-ups every month. I follow all the necessary protective measures to ensure continuous care.\u201d<\/p>\n But this decision has had very painful consequences: Teodoro cannot visit her dying father in a village in southern Italy. \u201cAlthough it is now against the law to leave your town of residence, I could have left Milan for something this serious,\u201d she says. \u201cBut, as a doctor, my sense of responsibility has prevailed. How could I travel from a city that has been so badly hit by the virus, without running the risk of spreading it to my family and my hometown?\u201d<\/p>\n Another Italian doctor, Federica Brena, posted a heartbreaking observation in a\u00a0Facebook message<\/a>\u00a0that has been shared by more than 55,000 people. \u201cThis picture [of my face mask] portrays the end of my guard yesterday, when after 12 hours spent breathing in that mask, I stripped of the war armor. Yeah cause it feels like war. I\u2019ve never experienced it, but I imagine a little like this, a war against a new and unknown enemy. \u201d<\/p>\n Brena is an oncologist in Bergamo, the northern Italian city that is being devastated by the virus \u2013 in mid-March the whole country was moved by the images of the army taking the coffins of the victims out of the town because there was\u00a0no longer space at the local cemetery<\/a>. \u201cThe hospitals have been reduced to lazarettos [isolation hospitals for highly infectious patients], the health system is on the verge of collapse,\u201d Brena\u2019s post continues. \u201cWhat will happen to the other sick people?\u201d<\/p>\n Although Covid-19 appears to\u00a0kill more men than women<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 the Italian Higher Institute of Health has observed a mortality rate of 7.2% for men compared to 4.1% for women \u2013 it is women who are on the frontline of the fight against the disease. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), women represent\u00a070% of workers in the health and social sector<\/a>, though in the Chinese province of Hubei \u2013 the epicenter of the outbreak \u2013 that figure stands at 90%. Women are also primarily responsible for caring for children and the elderly. And they are in a more financially vulnerable position than men \u2013 in Europe, the employment rate for women is 65% compared to 78% for men \u2013 an issue that will be exacerbated by the\u00a0economic fallout of the crisis<\/a>. And yet, still no political or health authority has analyzed the impact of the coronavirus from a gender perspective.<\/p>\n