Understanding the Importance of a Gendered Analysis of COVID-19

COVID-19 travels along existing lines of inequality, gender being one of these major fault lines. We refer to gender as the social relations of power that operate to build hierarchies between differently embodied people. Because of its relational nature, analyses of gender require an intersectional approach, such that gender is examined in relation to ‘race’, class, sexuality, and stage of the life cycle. We argue, moreover, that while a social construction, ‘gender’ takes place within the fleshy confines of a complex biological and physiological bodily system. Hence, we examine COVID-19 disparities between gendered bodies in relation to biological as well as social and behavioural factors. Despite a globally equal rate of infection between men and women, there is a more severe level of disease and higher level of mortality among men than women, and yet COVID-19 has a disproportionate impact on women because of gendered social factors. Indeed, COVID-19 has served to heighten awareness of the gendered analyses of institutional racism and violence against women and is eroding the limited gains in gender equality made over the past decades, with the pandemic deepening pre-existing inequalities.