Why Women May Face a Greater Risk of Catching Coronavirus

As the Coronavirus snakes its way around the world — canceling events, shuttering offices and suspending classes — some health experts worry that the crisis could put women at a disproportionate risk, exacerbating gender, social and economic fault lines.

Typical gender roles can “influence where men and women spend their time, and the infectious agents they come into contact with, as well as the nature of exposure, its frequency and its intensity,” declared the World Health Organization in a 2007 report. In other words: The roles that women have in society could place them squarely in the virus’s path (although some early studies of Coronavirus cases in China suggest men have a higher death rate).

Around the world, women make up a majority of health care workers, almost 70 percent according to some estimates, and most of them occupy nursing roles — on the front lines of efforts to combat and contain outbreaks of disease. In China’s Hubei Province, where the current Coronavirus outbreak originated, about 90 percent of health care workers are women. In the U.S., that number is around 78 percent.

Attribution:New York Times