IWD 2021 campaign theme: #ChooseToChallenge

Fast Forward marks International Women’s Day 2021, with a focus on the health inequalities impacting on women’s lives.

A challenged world is an alert world. Individually, we’re all responsible for our own thoughts and actions – all day, every day.

We can all choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality. We can all choose to seek out and celebrate women’s achievements. Collectively, we can all help create an inclusive world.

From challenge comes change, so let’s all choose to challenge, the inequalities faced by women everyday across the world, including health inequalities.

There are gender-based differences in life expectancy, healthy life years, health behaviours, mortality, and morbidity risks. This is partly due to the socially constructed roles of men and women, and the relationships between them. These norms influence the health conditions individuals are susceptible to, as well as access to and uptake of health services.

Women live longer than men, but spend fewer years in good health. Further, gender role conflicts, total workload, and unpaid work have potential adverse effects on women’s wellbeing and long-term health.

The financial and social impacts of COVID-19 has affected women disproportionately, and women who are poor and marginalised have been hit the hardest.

According to the UN, women make up 70% of health workers and first responders globally, but the pay gap in the sector is 28% – higher than the overall gender pay gap of 16%. Women are more likely to have lost their jobs, and their unpaid care responsibilities have increased more than those of men. There are concerns that gender-based violence will have increased as a result of COVID-19, and a report from the Scottish government indicates lockdown has significantly increased the referral rates for some support services.

If we let it, COVID-19 will undo recent progress in gender equality – and that would be bad for economic recovery and the global GDP.

Investing in policies that are good for women – such as protection for informal workers and unpaid carers – makes good economic sense.

These can be addressed through an integrated holistic approach to health promotion, access to healthcare, and labour market integration based on gender equality; promoting empowerment of all women and girls through full participation in society and decision making.