Director of the Pan American Health Organization, Dr. Carissa Etienne, has lamented that despite women making up the great majority of healthcare workers, they remain disproportionately represented in national and global health leadership.

“Women head households and are the main providers for many of these households – much of this is unpaid work and in the informal labor workforce. Indeed, women are at the very heart of the response, yet women remain disproportionately underrepresented in national and global health leadership, whether in health institutions or other policy-making bodies,” she said, while speaking at a conference earlier this week. 

Meanwhile, Alejandra Mora Mora, Executive Secretary of the OAS Inter-American Commission on Women (CIM),  said women’s leadership must be recognized. “The first thing that must be done in terms of leadership is make our leadership visible,” she said. “We are ready to make decisions. So when we are not being recognized, we must question and denounce,” she said.

Mora called on governments to recognize that the pandemic has affected women differently, in part by increasing the domestic violence against them as they spend more time at home with their partners. “We need to call on states to put on the lens of gender,” she said. “We cannot continue believing that we are all equal – that differentiated impacts do not exist.”

The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day which was commemorated on March 8th, was “#ChooseToChallenge” and is aimed at calling out gender inequality and celebrating women’s achievements.