Is COVID Sexist?

The great Australian feminist Germaine Greer said there are only two things a woman can't do as well as a man; design dresses and cook. It's a great line, worthy of that fantastic public intellectual's subversive wit, but there is something else that we men may be better at than our lovelier counterparts: dying of the coronavirus. As of a few weeks ago, 58% of all serious cases in Italy were male and men there were out-dying women at a rate of 3 to 1. Similar statistics were born out in other countries (in South Korea, it was 4 to 1). Why is this?

For starters, we smoke more. Smoking tastes good and looks cool so we do it to impress chicks. Unfortunately, COVID-19 is a respiratory disease that attacks the lungs. Women are 51% of the population but make up only 20% of smokers so their lungs aren't already weakened by years (or decades) of tobacco use before the virus has a chance to do its damage. Secondly, there is some evidence that estrogen, which women produce more than men, has protective qualities against coronaviruses generally. Tests on mice found that SARS and MERS, cousins of our current unwanted guest, were more deadly for male mice of all ages than they were for female mice. Interestingly, those rates evened out when the female mice had their ovaries removed or were given estrogen blockers. 

Now, try to forget for a moment that it was someone's job once to remove a mouse's ovaries just to see if it would make it more likely to die of something else and consider this. I've written in this newsletter that the world has a long history of sticking women with the bill for disasters not entirely of their making. We say things like "It was Pandora who unleashed this on the world," or "It was Eve's fall that landed us here," or "I would have everything I ever wanted if not for that bitch Carole Baskin." I worry that women are about to bear the brunt again. Despite women's resistance to the virus (and their likelihood of taking social distancing more seriously), the pandemic has not been especially kind to them. Domestic violence reports in China tripled in February, a trend that eerily followed the curve of the virus' spread from country to country. In Australia, the most googled phrase the last 30 days has been "domestic violence help," help that is harder to report when your attacker is in the house all the time. Malaysia, for its part, thought that issuing recommendations that women "wear makeup" at home and "avoid nagging" their spouses was a good idea (they have since taken down the public posters). As children are home from school or nurseries, women will take on more of the child-rearing responsibilities. In Britain, 40% of working women work part time, compared to 13% of men, making their work more expendable and the expectation will be that they will pick up the slack of extra housework, work women already do the majority of across the world anyway. If it takes a village to raise a child, what happens when the village is required to stay away? Traditionally, it has fallen on the moms to pick up the slack. It will be harder still on single mothers. 

Further, we may have more new mothers and fathers nine months from now than we usually do. The world's largest condom-maker, headquartered in Malaysia (there are those Malaysians again!) is predicting a prophylactic shortage because of factory shut-downs. A quarantine generation is undoubtedly on the way and if it coincides with a potential second wave of the virus, families will have to figure out their roles which is hard enough in normal times. 

Individual households are going to have to make their own arrangements about who does what across all fronts, from child-rearing to housework to bread winning. Here's hoping that you make yours as equitable as possible. What's certain is that during this time, women will prove Germaine Greer correct, that they are a man's equal in the sectors of public health, economic growth or domestic matters. It would serve them well to make sure legislators don't forget it when this is over. During the last pandemic, the Spanish Flu of 1918, women's increased their numbers in the work force to make up for the gap left by World War I and the flu, and their successes there, were some of the reasons the 19th Amendment was ratified, giving women the right to vote in 1920. In times of crisis, the very people we blame are the same we often turn to.