“Pandemic recovery plans cannot simply work to bring economies back to their pre-COVID status,” said Katrina Fotovat, Senior Official in the Office of Global Women’s Issues at the U.S. Department of State. She spoke at a recent event hosted by the Wilson Center’s Maternal Health Initiative and Middle East Project in collaboration with EMD Serono, the healthcare business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, on recognizing women’s paid and unpaid work during COVID-19 recovery. Economic recovery plans must include the most undervalued industries and marginalized workers, especially women, she said.

“Nearly 70 percent of the lowest wage workers in the United States are women,” said Nicole Berner, General Counsel to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) at a recent event on the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on women and essential workers, hosted by the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership.

Globally, 15 to 20 percent of women experience a perinatal mental health condition, said Sarah Barnes, Project Director of the Maternal Health Initiative at a recent event, held in partnership with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), on mental health support for mothers in the perinatal period. Women are more likely to develop anxiety or depression in the year after giving birth than in any other time in their lives, with suicide and overdose the leading causes of death in the first year postpartum. “And yet, the prevention, early recognition, and treatment of perinatal mental health conditions is a challenge for many, if not most, healthcare systems across the world,” said Barnes.

One in five women who is forcibly displaced will experience sexual violence, said Charlotte Slente, Danish Refugee Council Secretary-General at a roundtable on the prevention of gender-based violence in humanitarian crises during the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly. The high-level roundtable was hosted by the Government of Denmark in partnership with several other international bilateral agencies, as well as women-led organizations.*

COVID-19 continues to pose a high risk to pregnant people who contract the virus. Despite this concern, hesitancy surrounding the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy remains, write the authors of a preprint article on COVID-19 vaccines and pregnancy outcomes. As COVID-19 vaccines become more widely available, some have raised concerns regarding potential links between receiving a COVID-19 vaccine and experiencing miscarriage (also known as spontaneous abortion), and other adverse outcomes. However, miscarriage is a common occurrence – around 10 to 15 percent of all pregnancies in the United States end in miscarriage – and multiple studies have found no increase in miscarriage in persons who received a COVID-19 vaccine.