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TeaThe gender gap in India has always been skewed, with most health indicators, literacy levels and employment figures favoring men. As India embarks on its biggest ever vaccination campaign against COVID-19, this gap is widening and should be bridged.
As per data from CoWin Dashboard, around 57 crore vaccines have been administered till 19th August 2021. administered, more than the entire population of some countries. Yet women constitute only 46 percent of the total immunized population in India.
As a public health professional, I have seen this discrepancy before. During my stint in the Immunization Technical Support Unit (ITSU) of the Government of India, I visited most of the states for reviews, surveys and programmatic assessments related to the Universal Immunization Programme. Hailed as the largest immunization program in the world, it reaches 26 million children and 30 million pregnant women annually with life-saving vaccines. In 2015, I founded the NGO Samarpan to address socio-economic issues at the grassroots level. Ever since COVID-19 came, we have been working to create awareness and access to vaccines for women.
In the course of this work, I have spoken to many women – mothers, caregivers and frontline workers in urban and rural settings. I found that women’s health is often neglected for a variety of reasons, and the pandemic has added to these challenges.
Read also: Equal access to vaccines is not just about health. It’s also about economic recovery
What is stopping women in India from getting the Kovid-19 vaccine?
Often women are not the decision makers about their health. Their father, husband and son record how they approach their health. According to the National Family Health Survey-4, more women will allow their husbands to make decisions about their health care, rather than make the decisions themselves.
In addition, women who do not go out to work are often not considered to be at risk of contracting COVID. Apart from this challenge, vaccination sessions are conducted on days when many people are busy with household chores or looking after their children. Women who are daily wage earners earn between Rs 150 to Rs 230 per day and cannot miss a day’s work. Getting two meals a day is more essential for them to guard against a disease they haven’t contracted yet.
Faced with these challenges, vaccination sites or mobile camps are often located far from their homes. Since many women are dependent on men for mobility, this would mean that they are both missing out on work. The lack of a vaccine adds to hesitation as there is no assurance of a shot despite traveling long distances and taking vacations.
Fear of adverse effects from vaccination is another obstacle. Many women are concerned that they will have side effects and miss extra days of work. Also, in rural settings, paracetamol is rarely given, which means that if they have a fever after the vaccine, they will not be able to treat it.
Another difficulty is the low rate of digital literacy and poor access to smartphones, making it a challenge for women to book appointments at vaccination sites where online registration is mandatory.
Read also: India’s last-mile Covid-19 responders are paving the way for a fair recovery
ways to increase vaccination
At Samarpan we are working with panchayats, local school teachers and community leaders to allay fear and hesitation in the population. Women come to me asking if vaccination is safe during menstruation, and whether they can take it during pregnancy or while trying to conceive. Vaccination during pregnancy is absolutely safe and has nothing to do with affecting the fertility of a woman or a man.
The Narendra Modi government and the society have a big task of bridging the vaccination gap. The government needs to invest in behavior change communication – along with personal communication from doctors, frontline workers and local community leaders. The government also needs to organize more camps near villages to make vaccination sites accessible and offsite registration normalized in urban areas.
There should also be strategies to provide non-financial incentives to compensate for the loss of work for vaccinated poor families. For example, Samarpan is providing 10 days’ ration and one year’s stationery to children whose parents have been vaccinated.
Most importantly, women need to be empowered. This is true not only for COVID-19 vaccination, but for improving every aspect of their health, education and livelihood. Empowerment will come with financial independence, changing mindset, equal opportunities and breaking down the social barriers that hinder their progress. Society cannot leave women behind.
The author is a public health and social impact professional with more than 14 years of experience working in policy, advocacy, research and implementation. A Chevening Fellow from the University of Oxford, she currently leads the health care vertical at the World Economic Forum, India, and heads her NGO Samarpan. She tweets @DrRumaBhargava. Thoughts are personal.
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