(Press-News.org) A newly released compendium, Feminism and COVID-19: How Women Fare in the Face of a Global Crisis, is revealing how women across the world were simultaneously critical for the success of the global COVID-19 response, and disproportionately impacted by the pandemic’s secondary effects, such as lost income, and increased unpaid care work and violence.
Book co-editors, Dr. Julia Smith of Simon Fraser University and Dr. Clare Wenham from the London School of Economics, gathered together a unique multidisciplinary and transnational team of authors and experts who examined nine case studies of the COVID-19 response and its global and local impacts on women from Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Hong Kong, Kenya, Nigeria and the United Kingdom.
“To facilitate pandemic preparedness, we now must learn from the past,” says Smith. “These case studies include a multitude of lessons on how to insure those at the center of pandemic response – i.e., women – are also protected from its worst effects.”
Feminism and COVID-19 has received much praise. Dr. Jennifer Piscopo, a professor at the University of London, commented that “[t]his remarkable volume about COVID-19 policies in diverse countries and territories shows that, rather that creating ruptures leading to transformational change, health emergencies actually reinscribe patriarchy and intersectional inequalities.”
Feminism and COVID-19 is published by The MIT Press.
Chapters and authors featured in Feminism and COVID-19: How Women Fare in the Face of a Global Crisis
Unbalanced Scales: Exploring the Impacts of the Unequal Burden of Responsibilities Borne by Women during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Dhaka, Bangladesh
Selima Sara Kabir, Moumita Islam, Amal Chowdhury, Nazia Mahmud, and Sabina Faiz Rashid
“It Is the Woman Who Has to Do Everything, Paid or Unpaid”: Work, Gender, and COVID-19 in Brazil
Mariela Rocha, Aponira Maria de Farias, Brunah Schall, Eduardo Ryo Tamaki, Paloma Porto, Paulo Silva Júnior, Flora Gonçalves, and Denise Nacif Pimenta
“A Double-Edged Sword”: Lived Experiences of Recent Immigrant Women in British Columbia, Canada, during COVID-19
Alice Mũrage and Julia Smith
“Because I Am a Woman, the Man Think They Need to Protect Me”: Gendered Experience of First Responders to COVID-19 in China
Connie C. R. Gan and Sara E. Davies
“We Want to Improve the Situation, but It’s Not under Our Control”: Gendered Risks, Impacts, and Response in Hong Kong
Ingrid D. Lui and Karen A. Grépin
“Since They Call Us Volunteers, There Is No Support at All”: Community Health Volunteers during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Kenya
Anne Ngunjiri, Robinson Karuga, Linet Okoth, and Lillian Otiso
“We the Women Do a Lot of Support”: Experiences of Women Market Traders, Women Living in Slums, and Women with Disabilities in Lagos, Nigeria, during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Amy Oyekunle, Uche Ralph-Opara, Patience Agada, and Oluwakemi Odukoya
“I Feel Like I’ve Been Left at ‘Good Luck. Hopefully, Nothing Goes Wrong’”: The Experiences of Pregnant Women during COVID-19 in the UK
Asha Herten Crabb, Karen Grépin, and Clare Wenham
Women’s Economic and Social Vulnerability to the Pandemic: Lessons from Bangladesh, Kenya, and Nigeria
Valerie Mueller, Nicole Wu, Atonu Rabbani, and Karen Grépin
Gender-Responsive Pandemic Planning
Heang-Lee Tan, Kate Hawkins, Erica Rosser, Julia Smith, Clare Wenham, and Rosemary Morgan
END
New book examines how COVID-19 crisis entrenched inequality for women around the world
2026-03-06
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Evolved robots are born to run and refuse to die
2026-03-06
Northwestern University engineers have developed the first modular robots with athletic intelligence. They can be combined and recombined in the wild, recover from injury and keep moving no matter what’s thrown at them.
Called “legged metamachines,” the creations are made from autonomous, Lego-like modules that snap together into an endless number of configurations. Each module by itself is a complete robot with its own motor, battery and computer. Alone, a module can roll, turn and jump. But the real agility and indestructibility emerges when the modules combine.
The study was published today (March 6) in the Proceedings ...
Study finds shared genetic roots of MS across diverse ancestries
2026-03-06
Study finds shared genetic roots of MS across diverse ancestries
A new study published in Neurology and led by Queen Mary University of London, has revealed that people of South Asian, African and European ancestry share many of the same genetic risk factors for multiple sclerosis (MS).
This new study is one of the most ancestrally diverse genetic analyses of MS conducted in the UK. MS affects around 150,000 people ...
Endocrine Society elects Wu as 2027-2028 President
2026-03-06
WASHINGTON—Endocrine Society members elected Joy Wu, M.D., Ph.D., of the Stanford University School of Medicine in Stanford, Calif., as its 2027-2028 President. She will serve as President-Elect for a year beginning in June 2026 before becoming President in June 2027.
Wu is the Gerald M. Reaven, MD Professor of Endocrinology, Chief of the Division of Endocrinology and Vice Chair of Basic Science in the Department of Medicine at Stanford. She is a board-certified endocrinologist ...
Broad pay ranges in job postings linked to fewer female applicants
2026-03-06
ITHACA, N.Y. – Pay range transparency laws that are intended to promote pay equity can inadvertently deter women from applying for those positions, thus perpetuating gender gaps in the workforce, according to research from Cornell University.
“Across our four studies, we consistently found that women show a stronger preference for jobs with narrower salary ranges compared to men, and that this preference is associated with less assertive negotiation behaviors. In other words, the way these laws are being implemented may be perpetuating the very pay gaps they were designed to close,” said Alice Lee, ...
How to make magnets act like graphene
2026-03-06
The electronic and magnetic properties of two-dimensional materials both have strong potential for technological applications. Researchers have long assumed that they are distinct phenomena, but Illinois Grainger engineers have demonstrated that they share a mathematical language.
In an article recently published in Physical Review X, a team in The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign showed how to engineer two-dimensional magnetic systems to obey the same equations as mobile electrons ...
The hidden cost of ‘bullshit’ corporate speak
2026-03-06
ITHACA, N.Y. – Employees who are impressed by vague corporate-speak like “synergistic leadership,” or “growth-hacking paradigms” may struggle with practical decision-making, a new Cornell University study reveals.
Published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, research by cognitive psychologist Shane Littrell introduces the Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale (CBSR), a tool designed to measure susceptibility to impressive-but-empty organizational rhetoric.
“Corporate bullshit is a specific style of communication that uses confusing, abstract buzzwords in a functionally misleading way,” ...
Greaux Healthy Day declared in Lake Charles: Pennington Biomedical’s Greaux Healthy Initiative highlights childhood obesity challenge in SWLA
2026-03-06
Local elected officials and community stakeholders gathered on March 5 at Lake Charles Memorial Hospital to learn about Pennington Biomedical Research Center’s Greaux Healthy initiative. Greaux Healthy is an initiative by LSU’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center in partnership with the State of Louisiana focused on preventing and treating childhood obesity in Louisiana.
Lake Charles Mayor Marshall Simien, Jr. was onsite to present the group with a proclamation announcing March 5th as “Greaux ...
Into the heart of a dynamical neutron star
2026-03-06
Neutron stars harbor some of the most extreme environments in the universe: their densities soar to several times those of atomic nuclei, and they possess some of the strongest gravitational fields of any known objects, surpassed only by black holes. First observed in the 1960s, much of the internal composition of neutron stars is still unknown. Scientists are beginning to look to gravitational waves emitted by binary neutron-star inspirals—pairs of mutually orbiting neutron stars—as possible sources ...
The weight of stress: Helping parents may protect children from obesity
2026-03-06
New Haven, Conn. — In recent years, rates of childhood obesity have been rising, with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control estimating in 2024 that approximately one in five children and adolescents met the clinical definition of obese.
But preventing childhood obesity is a complex undertaking. While encouraging a healthy diet and adequate exercise have long been two strategies for reducing risk of obesity in children, Yale researchers have recently identified a crucial third: lowering parent stress.
A research team led by Yale psychologist Rajita Sinha has found that ...
Cost of physical therapy varies widely from state-to-state
2026-03-06
New Haven, Conn. — Physical therapy (PT) is used in the management of many medical conditions. But variation in rates paid by commercial insurers can contribute to high out-of-pocket costs, leading some patients to underuse or stop PT altogether. For many people, that means potentially poor rehabilitation outcomes.
In a new study, Yale researchers evaluated commercial payer-negotiated rates for outpatient PT services at a cross-section of hospitals across the United States. They found that costs for PT vary substantially based on location and insurance status.
“PT is used in the management of many acute and chronic medical conditions, ...