Since the onset of the pandemic, nurses and midwives have been asked in some facilities to work without personal protective equipment. Nurses have been sent home and lost their jobs simply because they insisted on following evidence-based practices, such as wearing masks. Some question whether the masks, gloves, gowns, and other commodities in short supply are more important than nurses who question the ethics of showing up when essentials aren’t available.

“While COVID-19 has wreaked havoc the world over, history has proven, and recent data agrees that the hardest hit will be the world’s women and girls and populations already impacted by racism and discrimination,” said Sarah Barnes, Project Director of the Maternal Health Initiative and Women and Gender Advisor at the Wilson Center, at a recent event on the impact of COVID-19 on race and gender inequities. Coronavirus has hurt women and girls in many ways. Among them, women have been pushed back into the home.  And healthcare workers and caregivers who are mostly women are jeopardizing their own health, caring for others.

“Today is the International Day of the Midwife, a day when we come together as a global health community to celebrate midwives, and the commitment of the midwifery profession globally to saving lives and upholding the rights of women to a safe and positive birth,” write the authors of the Global Call to Action: Protecting Midwives to Sustain Care for Women, Newborns and their Families in the COVID-19 Pandemic. Midwives are essential to the health and protection of women and newborns. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 83 percent of all maternal deaths, stillbirths, and newborn deaths could be averted with the full package of midwifery care.

“The year is 2020 and it’s a year none of us will forget due to the Covid-19 pandemic,” said Sarah Barnes, Women and Gender Advisor and Project Director of the Maternal Health Initiative at the Wilson Center at a recent webcasted Wilson Center event. “The year 2020, as designated by the World Health Organization, is also the Year of the Nurse and the Midwife and was meant to be a year of celebration and much due recognition of these two incredible professions.” This month, the first ever State of the World’s Nursing report was published by the World Health Organization (WHO), International Council of Nurses, and Nursing Now.

Gender is shaping the COVID-19 crisis in real and significant ways. Beyond the direct, visible practices that by now we all should understand—stay home, wash your hands, step back six feet—gender and its interactions with class, race, and immigrant status impact a number of dimensions of this crisis. From epidemiology to the vulnerabilities of front-line health workers, from the distribution of care work within families to the implications of quarantine for domestic violence, we need to reflect critically on these interactions to shape a truly effective policy response to this pandemic.

The rhetoric of war is all around us during the Covid-19 pandemic, from the World Health Organization to historical takes. More critical assessments note that this war, like others, will hurt the most vulnerable. In a recent essay, feminist political scientist Cynthia Enloe takes issue with this rhetoric, pointing to the historic ways in which wars have led to “racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic practices.” Whether or not war rhetoric is helpful at this crucial moment, the current pandemic should be a wake-up call to expand what investments we consider essential to our national security, how we value work, and who gets called a hero.