The need for an intersectional lens in health emergencies.

It was unsettling to read the Comment by Miguel Parra-Saavedra and Jezid Miranda (August, 2021). Their sense of alarm is focused on the next generation and anchored largely on the impact the COVID-19 pandemic might have on the unborn child and “the future of a society”. This theoretical framing is concerning; we know that public health emergencies have a gendered impact on the lives of women, and particularly on the most vulnerable among them. Women are the most seriously affected, and global health policies continue to shift the focus away from women, even after substantial evidence has shown the importance of applying an intersectional gender lens to preparedness and response to health emergencies.2, 3, 4

For Parra-Saavedra and Miranda, gender is not an analytical category in evaluating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women's mental health. They fail to offer a careful analysis of how the social determinants of inequalities contribute to the disproportional burden on women and their health or life projects. There is abundant evidence showing how COVID-19 has exacerbated gender-based violence, unsafe abortion, maternal mortality, and women's impoverishment.3, 5 The reductionist frame of this Comment reinforces the medical patriarchy bias that “women are only made visible through motherhood”; in fact, this concern with women's mental health seems more like a rhetorical means of speaking about the fetus.

As researchers and health providers from the Global South, we were particularly surprised by the conclusion of the first paragraph of the Comment, in which women are reduced to mothers; their health matters insofar as it will impact “the unborn child” and their “probability of equal capabilities and opportunities as adults”. Pregnant women are under severe stress in countries where vaccines are not available for them, particularly those living in Latin America and the Caribbean. The fear and mental stress are caused by an external factor, which should be named: it is the medical science patriarchy that keeps ignoring women's rights and needs.

We declare no competing interests.