Where are all the Women? Keynote speaker discusses gender representation in research and academia during the pandemic

As part of the two-week Global Health Learning Symposium, this week, Dr. Purnima Madhivanan delivered an impactful keynote titled “Where are all the women? Gender representation in research & academia during the pandemic”.

As the current Director of Public Health Research Institute of India (PHRII) and the Director of the Global Health Equity Scholars (GHES) Training Program, she brings a unique perspective on global health. With a focus on disadvantaged populations, her research explores the elucidating the dynamics of poverty, gender, and the environmental determinants of health, in particular to the impact on women and children living in rural communities.

Setting the stage for her talk, Dr. Madhivanan presented global COVID-19 statistics reported by Global Health 50/50 on the number of cases, hospitalization, and mortality being disaggregated by sex. This data reveals that for every 10 females that tested positive for COVID-19, there were also 10 men that tested positive; however, for every 10 females hospitalized for COVID-19, there were 12 males hospitalized.

She explained that although the data indicates that COVID-19 has disproportionally affected men across all countries and age groups, “very few countries have gender-responsive COVID-19 policies for health sectors”.  And that despite gender differences in outcomes, not all governments are reporting data separately by women and men.  In fact, the only four countries that have gender responsive policies are Canada, India, Bangladesh, and Sudan. These countries all have at least three of the six areas of focus: vaccination, public health messaging, clinical guidelines, surveillance, protection of health care workers, and essential health services.

Challenging the statistics, Dr. Madhivanan stated that the underreporting of deaths at home or outside medical facilities could further alter the statistics. Due to this, the incomplete data on sex/gender disparities in COVID-19 outcomes may magnify the appearance of health disparities. Further, she highlighted that sex-disaggregated COVID-19 data does not account for gender identity, therefore the impact of COVID-19 on transgender and non-binary people is not represented.

On the topic of academia and women in science, Dr. Madhivanan emphasized that across all disciplines, they found that men were submitting and publishing at a much higher rate than women.  In fact, the research conducted by her team revealed that, of the 1500 articles published over the pandemic in a high caliber journal, only 30% of the articles had a female first author and less than 28% had a female senior authorship.

Advocating for equal gender representation in academia, she remarked, “when women scientists face barriers in publication and journal leadership, the pace of discovery in science slows down and critical perspectives are lost”. Dr. Madhivanan further emphasized that underplaying the role of sex/gender and other variables in shaping COVID-19 outcomes can misdirect resources and put people in harm’s way.  She urges young global health scholars to reflect upon who is narrating the reporting on COVID-19 as this has a direct impact on public health response.

By challenging the ways in which data is presented for varying audiences, and acknowledging that there is a larger spectrum of identities, we can gain a better grasp of data quality and shift the narrative on gender and health. Taking a more holistic approach to understand who is at risk and impacted by COVID-19 will lead to the development of gender responsive policies – which is essential to building an effective, equitable response to the pandemic and future global health crises.