Why the coronavirus pandemic has different consequences for men and women

The Covid-19 pandemic has completely different consequences for men and women - and not just in terms of health. It would seem that the virus should not care who it infects. Why does gender matter so much? Tells Air force.

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This coronavirus spares no one, neither bus drivers nor prime ministers. Does he like people of a certain gender more? And how can this be? After all, a virus is an almost inanimate piece of drifting genetic material. He cannot consciously make a choice.

Yet it affects different groups of the population very differently. The most obvious difference is between men and women.

This difference is not only in the course of the disease itself, but also in its long-term consequences - for health and economic status.

Difference in the course of the disease

One of the most striking differences is the mortality rate. For example, in the United States, twice as many men die as coronavirus than women.

In Western Europe, 69% of all coronavirus deaths are men. The same thing is happening in China and around the world.

Scientists from University College London keep a gender statistics on morbidity in countries around the world, trying to understand why such a difference. The reason is still unclear.

According to one theory, the response of the female immune system to the virus is stronger, says Philip Gulder, professor of immunology at Oxford University.

“The immune response to vaccines and infections is generally more aggressive and more effective in women compared to men,” he says.

This is partly because women have two X chromosomes and men have one, which could be important when faced with the coronavirus.

“In particular, the protein by which coronaviruses are recognized is encoded on the X chromosome,” continues Goulder. “As a result, this protein is expressed as a double dose in many immune cells in women—unlike men.” And the female body’s immune response to coronavirus is accordingly strengthened.”

Another explanation is the different lifestyles of men and women. This is manifested, for example, in smoking, which affects the level of concomitant diseases - heart disease, chronic pulmonary diseases and oncology, says Goulder. All this affects the outcome of the infectious disease caused by coronavirus.

“This difference is especially noticeable in some countries - for example, in China, where 50% of men and only 5% of women smoke.”

However, at this stage of the pandemic, we cannot yet say unambiguously which of the reasons is more important - or, perhaps, both have an influence.

On the subject: You may have been ill with Covid-19 and not known about it: unobvious symptoms of coronavirus infection

Financial implications

There is, however, another important aspect of how a pandemic affects men and women in different ways.

Michele Tertilt, an economist at the University of Mannheim (Germany), and her colleagues are collecting evidence of this - using the example of US men and women workers.

So, the so-called lockdown was already worth the work to a huge number of people, and the recession threatens the economy of many countries.

But in unemployment, men and women are not equal. The circumstances of this, however, are truly unique and, according to Tertilt, differ from a typical recession.

In the United States, 1,4 million people lost their jobs in March, the largest surge since 1975. Women suffered more - unemployment increased by 0,9% (for men - by 0,7%).

What’s unusual about the current crisis, among other things, is that usually men suffer more from unemployment during a recession, because they mostly work in those areas of production that are closely related to economic cycles, for example, in construction or industry.

Women, by contrast, are more employed in industries such as health and education.

But now other factors influence employment. One is whether you are a key or essential worker.

A team of scientists led by Tertilt considers key employees in the areas of healthcare, transport, law enforcement agencies (police), agriculture, fisheries, forestry, maintenance and repair.

According to this classification, 17% of women and 24% of men work in important sectors.

The second most important factor is whether people have the opportunity to work from home, “remotely.” It is clear that while a business analyst is quite capable of working remotely, a bartender is not.

Tertilt found that more men are able to work from home - 28% (22% among women).

“If you think about it, this is not surprising: a lot of women work in restaurants and in the tourism sector. But all over the world, restaurants and bars are closed and almost no one is traveling.”

“From an economic perspective, it's the low-wage, young, working-class women who are being hit the hardest,” says Natasha Mudhar, executive director and co-founder of The World We Want, an organization that calls itself a global movement aimed at achieving UN goals in areas of sustainable development.

The pay gap between men and women exacerbates inequality: women not only lose their jobs faster, but they get less for it.

In the US, women earn only 85% of what men earn. In Australia this figure is 86%, and in India - 75%.

The situation is even worse for women of certain races and nationalities: for example, in the USA black women earn 21% less than white women.

Single parents are in an even worse situation. In the United States, according to Tertilt, there are 20 million of them, and three quarters of them are women.

“Just imagine - they won’t be able to work,” says Tertilt. “Even if such a woman is a nurse or a doctor, even if she works in an important field for society, it doesn’t matter if she has a child at home, she won’t be able to leave him alone.”

Even if such parents have the ability to work remotely, it is not very realistic to assume that they are able to fully perform their duties when a small child constantly requires attention.

“This is especially true for single mothers,” Tertilt emphasizes. “Now they can’t hire a nanny or ask a grandmother or neighbor to babysit. So they lose their jobs."

The problem is that even in those countries where the government financially supports those who lose their jobs (UK, Germany, USA), such parents may not meet the criteria - for example, if they quit their jobs before the scheme was launched put into effect.

On the subject: Scientists explain why men die more often from coronavirus than women

Revealed inequality

“All epidemics have different consequences for different genders,” says Claire Wenham, associate professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science. “The problem is that no one talked about this before, and politicians were not aware of it.”

Wenham and colleagues investigated the effects of Zika and Ebola outbreaks on men and women, and are now investigating what is happening with the new coronavirus.

One of the consequences of the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone has been a significant leap in maternal mortality.

“We know from previous epidemics that all resources are usually thrown into fighting an outbreak,” Wenham says. “This means that the planned provision of health services is interrupted.”

On top of that, as a result of the pandemic, there are increasingly reports of domestic violence.

In France, for example, in the first week of the lockdown, the number of such cases increased by a third, in Australia - by 75%, in Lebanon - doubled.

And although domestic violence also affects men, women suffer the most: for example, in the United States they are more likely to be twice as likely to experience violence from a roommate. The risk of rape for women is 14 times higher.

“When you lock people in their homes during a stressful time, when people don't have money, when people don't have jobs, you don't have to be a scientist to figure out why that leads to domestic violence,” Wenham says.

At present, the picture is undeniably gloomy - for each gender in its own way.

For men, especially those belonging to older age groups, the most important concern is the possibility of becoming seriously ill and dying. For women who are more likely to recover by becoming infected, the consequences can last years to come.

According to Wenham, it is not too late for governments to take care of those who have suffered more economically than others. You can do a lot of things that will mitigate the financial blow to these people.

“We need to think about how to economically incentivize women during and after the pandemic, how to get them back to work,” she says. “For example, providing them with child care services.”

However, Tertilt's research found light at the end of the tunnel. In fact, two rays of hope.

The first is a flexible approach to the workplace.

“Millions of entrepreneurs and companies are adapting to working from home on the fly,” she points out.

In March, in some areas of the United States, the volume of work performed remotely increased by 200%.

“Within certain limits, this can become the norm and make it easier to balance career and family,” she says. “Women are the ones who will benefit from such changes in business culture, since they are mainly the ones caring for children in the family.”

The second ray of hope is a possible change of roles during the lockdown, albeit a forced one.

“Imagine a family where the wife is a doctor in a hospital on the front line of the fight against coronavirus, and the husband works from home,” she says. “In such a family, the husband suddenly becomes the main child care provider.”

Given that in 60% of American families this role is traditionally assigned to a woman, this will be a serious change with long-term consequences, Tertilt believes.

The experience of Germany and Sweden, where fathers have the opportunity to take leave in connection with the birth of a child, showed: this experience permanently changes the male approach to raising children.

“Even if quarantine and self-isolation last a month or two, long-term consequences are inevitable,” Tertilt is sure. “And if it’s longer, the consequences will be even more serious.”

Any health crisis exacerbates and highlights inequalities in various areas of life. Gender inequality is just one example.

For example, in the United States, cities with large African-American populations bear the brunt of the pandemic.

However, it highlights a problem that existed long before the pandemic - inequalities in access to health care. Black Chicagoans, for example, live an average of nine years less than their white neighbors.

Those with concomitant health problems are more at risk of dying from Covid-19. And diabetes and cardiovascular disease are disproportionately affecting African Americans.

Yes, the virus does not spare anyone, but this does not mean that all members of society experience the same risk.

Quite the opposite: this virus is making health care inequalities clearer than ever before.

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