There were plenty of obstacles to women’s careers before the pandemic. When schools went remote in the spring, it was theoretically possible that childcare would be distributed among genders. It is 2020, after all.
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It didn’t take long for womxn to share their struggle to work from home without the support of childcare. Pieces like this one, from @500womensci, sounded the alarm about the negative impact this all would have on womxn’s careers.
-Women’s jobs are 2x as vulnerable as those of men
-Women are 2x as likely to be responsible for home-schooling
-80% of people not working bc of lack of childcare are women
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Of the 1.1 million who left the workforce in September 2020, 865,000 were women.
Almost half of those women were Black or Latina.
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Intersectionality exacts a huge toll.
-1 in 6 Black women lost their jobs from February to June 2020
-In September 2020, 1 in 9 Black women and 1 in 9 Latinas were unemployed (this rate is 57% higher than it is for white women)
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The pandemic has affected women’s health, their domestic responsibilities, productivity, and rates of intimate partner violence.
-Women are 70% of healthcare workers globally and 73% of HCW infected with SARS-CoV-2
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-Women physicians already did 8.5 h more household work per week PRIOR TO COVID and now bear the majority of the additional labor
-Women’s authorship is down compared to the same period in 2019 (19% lower in medical journals compared to 2019)
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Women's lives are at risk even at home.
-Lockdown has been a/w 20% increase in domestic violence
-Those presenting to the ED now are presenting with more severe injuries
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We can't blame women for these problems.
“… the gendered nature of work across industries explains one-fourth of the difference between job-loss rates for men and women. The lack of systemic progress to resolve other societal barriers for women explains the rest.”
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I know it is tempting to divert your diversity budget to “more pressing” matters, but these data show what many of us have long known to be true. To not ACTIVELY counteract the significant challenges faced by womxn, and in particular womxn of color…
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…is not only a moral failing, it also has negative financial consequences. This is the time to d o u b l e d o w n on your commitment to diversity.
"Traditional" gender roles are still holding us back.
I'd love to hear what you/your organization are doing.
It’s become clear to me that Trump/Pence don’t believe in/understand social science. How can we move toward a more just nation with leaders who deny the existence of the very issues that are tearing us apart?
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In the #VPDebate, Pence said it was insulting to suggest that law enforcement has implicit bias. That’s like saying it’s insulting to say that law enforcement officers have two eyes and a nose. These are facts. Along with our facial features, we all have implicit bias.
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That’s why it’s so insidious and problematic. Indeed, the Executive Order on stereotyping also reveals a complete lack of understanding of these issues.
Given all that is going on in the world these days, many of you may have ideas for writing. Great! We need to hear more from healthcare workers. But, especially if you haven't done it before, you may have some questions about where to send your work.
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In advance of my session with @drjessigold on writing (for @WIMSummit), I thought I'd address one of the most common questions I get asked. Usually it goes something like this: I've written about abc. Where can I publish it?
People are bustling around in the room, going from the computer to the counter to pick up supplies, to the patient or the IV pump to deliver meds. The ventilator is making the sounds of inhalation/exhalation, persistently pushing oxygen into the lungs & evacuating the CO2.
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There is a heart monitor that keeps alarming—a persistent ding, ding, ding--until one of the bustlers temporarily silences it. There is a continuous dialysis machine running, & blood fills up the tubing. The IV pole is overwhelmed due to the number of meds that are needed.
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The nurse brings in a second IV pole for additional meds. In the middle of all this activity is the patient. Everything we do in that room is to try to keep the patient alive. As the oxygen level goes low, the monitor alarms again.
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I’ve been in Arizona a week now. Maybe it’s because I already knew what to expect. Or maybe it’s because I’m not caring for the sickest of the ICU patients. Either way, when I first got here, I thought, “This is not as bad as I had expected.”
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Then I started to wonder if pandemic fatigue affected even this aspect of my perception. Was I so jaded about this virus that seeing sick people dying alone no longer affected me?
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Then I experienced something that could warm even the coldest of hearts. It happens every day in every hospital—a patient needing a breathing tube. What played out, though, could have been a scene in a movie, with a haunting melody from a cello in the background.
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On my third day I got the reminder. My first two days here, things seemed normal-ish. Yes, there were way more ICU patients than usual, and most of them had #COVID19. We still have to wear lots of PPE, and patients stay sick in the hospital a long time.
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But we met in a workroom, not in a temporary ICU. We had some new patients who did not have COVID (at least not that we knew of). And there was a system in place for managing the additional strain on the hospital system.
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When I came in yesterday morning (day 3), 1 patient who had been stably critically ill had taken a sudden turn for the worse. And despite everything we could do, his life was ending. This is the COVID I remember from New York.
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Here’s my main insight from a half-day orienting in the hospital: 110 degrees is very hot. And temps above 100 until 10 pm means no running outside for me. (I know that’s not covid-specific, but still noteworthy!)
Non-weather related observations to follow.
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They’ve had to nearly double the number of ICU beds, and they have doubled the number of teams providing ICU care. The mortality rate seems to be lower than in NY but is still exacting quite a toll on the mental health of the healthcare workers.
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The amount of PPE seems to be no better than in NY 4 months ago. I have two N95s for ~3 weeks. If one gets soiled, I can ask for another.