The COVID-19 Pandemic and Ethics in Mexico Through a Gender Lens
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SYMPOSIUM: COVID-19
The COVID-19 Pandemic and Ethics in Mexico Through a Gender Lens Amaranta Manrique De Lara & María De Jesús Medina Arellano
Received: 12 May 2020 / Accepted: 10 August 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract In Mexico, significant ethical and social issues have been raised by the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the most pressing issues are the extent of restrictive measures, the reciprocal duties to healthcare workers, the allocation of scarce resources, and the need for research. While policy and ethical frameworks are being developed to face these problems, the gender perspective has been largely overlooked in most of the issues at stake. Domestic violence is the most prevalent form of violence against women, which can be exacerbated during a pandemic: stress and economic uncertainty are triggers for abuse, and confinement limits access to support networks. Confinement also exacerbates the unfair distribution of unpaid labor, which is disproportionately assigned to women and girls, and highlights inequality in the overall labor market. Lack of security measures has resulted in attacks towards health workers, particularly female nurses, due to fear of contamination. Finally, resource results in lack of access to other health necessities, including sexual and reproductive health services. Research across all disciplines to face—and to learn from—this crisis should be done through a gender lens, because understanding the A. Manrique De Lara : M. De Jesús Medina Arellano (*) Bioethics, Health and Biolaw Program, Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Circuito Mario de La Cueva s/n, Ciudad Universitaria, 04510 Mexico City, Mexico e-mail: [email protected]
A. Manrique De Lara e-mail: [email protected]
realities of women is essential to understand the pandemic’s true effects in Mexico and the world. Keywords Domestic violence . Pandemic . Equity . Global health ethics . Mexico
This year’s International Women’s Day was a historic occurrence in Mexico (El Universal 2020). Tens of thousands of women took to the streets on the eighth of March and then chose to vanish on the ninth (Averbuch 2020). Each day in its own way, the socalled 8M and 9M were meant to raise awareness about femicides and the foundation of structural violence against women on which they stand. Women all across the country sought to generate a widespread debate and called for active commitment from key stakeholders and decision-makers. But while they marched through the streets in Mexico, the rest of the world was beginning to become paralyzed by a virus which has claimed over 600,000 lives globally, confining individuals and families to their homes, and overwhelming already fragile health systems (World Health Organization 2020). And in this unprecedented situation, girls and women in Mexico find themselves caught between a rock and a hard place of two public health crises—the pandemic and gender-based violence—in a country where misogyny seems part of our cultural heritage (Htun and
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