Health and care workers deserve work conditions that ensure their safety and dignity and support their gender-specific needs. The Global Health and Care Workers Compact outlines recommendations to protect health and care worker rights, promote decent work, and ensure non-discriminatory practices. Drawing from various international conventions, treaties, and declarations, including those from the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Health Organization (WHO), the Global Health and Care Workers Compact is structured around four key domains: preventing harm, providing support, promoting inclusivity, and safeguarding rights. The key focus of preventing harm specifically addresses the unique challenges faced by women healthcare workers. This includes implementing measures to protect pregnant or nursing workers and individuals with vulnerabilities through appropriate infection prevention and control policies. Additionally, the compact emphasizes the importance of educating employers of domestic workers with care duties to ensure a healthy and safe work environment. The pandemic showed that equitable access to personal protective equipment (PPE), vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics during public health emergencies is just the beginning. But it is not enough. The #Fem4PeoplesVaccine campaign calls for prioritizing the intersectional needs of women working in both the formal and informal healthcare sectors. Caring for carers and ensuring their safety and dignity are imperative for a fair and equitable pandemic recovery. 🚨 Swipe left ⬅️ to read more. Read more about the Global Health and Care Workers Compact here https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240073852

The #pandemic underscored the long-neglected intersectional needs of women who make up a majority of healthcare workers worldwide. The World Health Organization has noted that at the outbreak of COVID-19, less than one in six countries had a national policy on a healthy and safe working environment. Globally, about 24 million of the 28.5 million nurses and midwives are women. However, women earn, on average, 24% less than their male counterparts, highlighting one of the larger gender pay gaps compared to other sectors. Moreover, women’s care work never ends. They bear a dual burden of care that extends continuously from working longer shifts at hospitals to managing care responsibilities at home. Women’s contribution to the health and care industry is significant. However, they are less likely to take on leadership roles where their voices can be heard and their experiences considered. Issues that range from ill-fitting PPEs to care duties that extend from hospital to home remain muted in decision-making processes. As a #pandemictreaty is being negotiated at the World Health Organization, the #Fem4PeoplesVaccine campaign calls for centering equity issues on the right to access vaccines and medicines as well as a work environment that ensures the safety and dignity of women healthcare workers.

According to the Women in Global Health Report, women make up a majority of healthcare workers. But during the pandemic, only 14% of female #healthcare workers around the globe had access to PPEs (personal protective equipment) that properly fit them. The manufacturing specifications for medical PPEs are designed for US and European males and do not consider the physical needs of the estimated 70% female health workforce. The gender blindness of the medical PPE design was just one of the indicators of #genderinequities in the pandemic response. Medical PPEs were essential in protecting healthcare workers from COVID-19 infection. However, the global shortage of PPEs and its single-use design forced many women healthcare workers to stay in their PPEs for hours. Healthcare workers reported compromising menstrual hygiene and being unable to change their sanitary pads. Additionally, ill-fitting PPE (which includes gloves, goggles, facemasks, and protective suits) placed women healthcare workers at a higher risk for exposure to the virus.

The #Fem4PeoplesVaccine campaign calls for women’s experiences with medical PPEs to be taken into account as a crucial step in ensuring a gender-equitable #pandemicresponse. A fair and just pandemic response must consider the #safety and dignity of healthcare workers.

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#Fem4PeoplesVaccine and the Women in Migration Network (@wimn_migration ) continue to shed light on the harsh realities migrants faced during the pandemic. Restricted access to healthcare, job insecurity, and racism/xenophobia are challenges migrants face every day. The pandemic worsened and widened existing gaps, leaving migrant communities more vulnerable. Migrant women, in particular, felt the intersectional and compounded impact of lockdown measures and exclusion from healthcare programs. Women in violent relationships were trapped with their abusers and cut off from crucial support services. Migrant women faced the loss of jobs, intensification of care work with children in remote schooling, xenophobia, and dangerous work as “essential workers”, all of which compounded health challenges.” As a #pandemictreaty is being negotiated at the World Health Organization, we must not lose sight of the grassroots issues. While high-level discussions take place on equity issues in the negotiations for the Pandemic Treaty, the struggles on the ground demand attention and planning. 🫱🏾‍🫲🏾 Together, let’s advocate for healthcare responses that prioritize migrants and the intersectional needs of migrant women to prevent inequalities from deepening. #MigrantHealth #WomensRights #pandemicresponse