Studies suggest that males are at a higher risk of death from the novel coronavirus than women. However, little is known about the impact on pregnant women beyond new delivery room restrictions in some places.
In New York City, men reportedly constitute an estimated 61% of patients who died from the coronavirus pandemic.
Still, women will likely still be disproportionately affected in several ways including the impact of school closures and the responsibility of taking care of infected individuals at home.
Alarming dilemmas are also the increased reports of domestic violence as survivors are obliged to lockdown with their abusers, and the affronts and hindering of reproductive healthcare. 85% of workers are nurses, 75% are primary caregivers, and 62% are minimum and low-wage workers.
Middle-aged, older men, and men with underlying health conditions that impact the immune system are being distinctively badly hit by the coronavirus.
Based on data from China, South Korea, and Italy, males seem to have higher fatality rates. Australia is shaping up to have similar records, but men are mostly in the 70-79 and 80-89 age groups.
"It's not a lot upfront to get that information, but the systems are often not set up to actually collect the information," according to Dyan Mazurana, a research professor from Tufts University who studies humanitarian crises and an author of a new report about gender-disaggregated data. She therefore said that people who can analyze and interpret the data are needed.
Females are more vulnerable to economic shocks wrought by the coronavirus. They are more likely to get fired from their work than males.
But in all 6 of the countries that had gender-specific records of fatalities from the coronavirus, data showed the proportion of men was higher than women.
Four of those countries (China, Italy, South Korea, and France), male mortality rates were beyond 50% greater than female rates.
The most apparent factors are lifestyle-related. According to the Office of National Statistics (ONS) in the U.K., a higher number of men (16.5 percent) than women (13 percent) smoke. Smokers are more likely to suffer from a lung or heart disease and are included in the "high risk" category for the coronavirus.
Men and women are also biologically different. They differ in their sex chromosomes and genes. Women have two copies of an X-chromosome, while men only have one X-chromosome and Y-chromosome that consists of a few genes.
A "toxic" Y-chromosome could lose its regulation in the aging process which might increase the speed of aging in men and render them more vulnerable to the coronavirus.
They are also at a disadvantage by their low estrogen levels which protect women from several diseases such as heart disease.
Meanwhile, aside from the rate of fatalities being different, a consultancy named Have Her Back that aims to aid companies to achieve gender equity conducted a research study at the end of March that surveyed employees of mid to large companies to assess how they were adjusting to the work-at-home arrangement.
The majority of the women were dissatisfied with the policies of working at home when compared to the men in general.
More females are more likely to be in poverty, to be reliant on social security and public services, and to contract the virus.
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