Women on the Frontline: A Changed Workforce and the Fight Against COVID-19

Abstract

COVID-19 is a worldwide pandemic, with frontlines that look drastically different than in past conflicts: that is, women now make up a sizeable majority of the health care workforce. American women have a long history of helping in times of hardship, filling positions on the home front vacated by men who enlisted as soldiers during World War I and similarly serving in crucial roles on U.S. military bases, on farms, and in factories during World War II. The COVID-19 pandemic has represented a novel battleground, as the first in which women have taken center stage, not only in their roles as physicians, respiratory therapists, nurses, and the like, but also by serving in leadership positions and facilitating innovations in science, technology, and policy. Yet, the pandemic has exacerbated multiple pain points that have disproportionally impacted women in health care, including shortages in correctly sized personal protective equipment and uniforms, inadequate support for pregnant and breastfeeding providers, and challenges associated with work–life balance and obtaining childcare. While the pandemic has facilitated several positive advancements in addressing these challenges, there is still much work to be done for women to achieve equity and optimal support in their roles on the frontlines.

COVID-19 is a worldwide pandemic, a battle against an invisible enemy. However, in this war, the frontlines have looked drastically different than in past conflicts: women now make up 40% of physicians and 75% of the overall health care workforce. ¹ Despite the fact that women comprise a sizeable majority of this workforce, medicine has lagged in addressing this gender shift. The current crisis has not only illuminated inequities but also accelerated the need to address them quickly and effectively. In a time of infectious threat, robust leadership and rapid adjustment of practices are crucial for all health care workers (HCW) to adequately and safely staff hospitals while minimizing harm to themselves, their patients, and their families.

We must acknowledge that this piece focuses predominantly on challenges for cisgender women in medicine and thus may not reflect the experiences of the transgender community, which faces additional obstacles in achieving parity. Racial inequities, also not specifically addressed here, further impact women of underrepresented minority groups. Hopefully, modifications made during this pandemic will also serve as a catalyst for longer-term, structural changes that will transform health care into a field that better supports its foot soldiers, regardless of sex, gender, race, or other identity categorization.

The Changing Role of Women in Times of National Conflict

World War I, World War II, and beyond

American women have a long history of helping in times of hardship. During World War I, millions rushed to fill positions vacated by men who enlisted as soldiers. They staffed munitions factories and the Red Cross, worked family farms, and planted victory gardens on the home front. Thousands were deployed overseas as Army and Navy nurses, and many more joined the U.S. military while remaining stateside. ² During World War II, Rosie the Riveter’s rallying cry propelled more than 6 million American women into the workforce. ³ While civilian and military women were crucial to the United States’ World War I and II efforts, they nevertheless remained largely out of harm’s way, predominately stationed on U.S. military bases, on farms, and in factories. Furthermore, while the ban on women serving in combat roles ended in 2013, ⁴ women still accounted for only 15% of active-duty personnel as of 2015. ⁵

COVID-19: A novel battleground

In contrast to prior conflicts, the frontline of the war against COVID-19 in the United States is disproportionately composed of women, including 3 million women nurses and 1 million women doctors (Table 1). ¹ A majority of the nation’s respiratory therapists, physician assistants, occupational and physical therapists, laboratory technicians, and phlebotomists are women as well. ¹ Even in fields historically dominated by men within medicine, women are a rising force, now comprising roughly 40% of all physicians and surgeons. ¹ Additionally, in 2018, for the first time, women comprised a majority of medical school matriculants. ⁶

Table 1.

Gender Composition of Frontline Providers in Selected U.S. Conflicts and the U.S. Health Care Workforce

In addition to those in the COVID-19 trenches, women are serving in prominent government and national institutional leadership roles. ⁷ Women scientists are spearheading the development of vaccine prototypes ⁸ and novel antibody testing. ⁹ Women hospital heads in major U.S. cities are providing publicly available updates on their respective hospital’s approaches to the pandemic to streamline efforts. ^10,11 Women innovators are developing personal protective equipment (PPE) through creative approaches, such as the use of 3D printing. ¹² Other women are working to ensure at-home viral testing kits for COVID-19 are more readily available to the general public. ¹³

Equipment and Infrastructure: Changes to Support Women in the Health Care Workforce

PPE and uniforms

Despite impressive contributions to science, medicine, technology, and public policy from women in current and preceding decades, some institutions have been slow to institute policies that appropriately support women staff (cisgender or otherwise), including prioritizing the availability of correctly sized equipment and uniforms (e.g., ensuring sufficient supply of smaller scrub sizes). ¹⁴ The pandemic has served to amplify these issues, particularly as hospitals scrambled to accommodate massive increases in patient volume during surges in cases. PPE shortages have made national headlines during this time. Yet, there was less attention paid to the fact that many women HCW require smaller-sized N95 masks and hospital scrubs, which were in even shorter supply. ¹⁵ It is not just a matter of comfort, but one of safety. Wearing a mask that does not fit means that it cannot function properly, as the deflection of viral particles depends on a tight seal to the wearer’s face. ¹⁶

Hospital leaders should thus be required to anticipate the needs of staff composed overwhelmingly of women by ensuring sufficient access to equipment of different sizes so as to protect all wearers equally. A renewed focus on improving the accuracy of hospital inventories by indexing N95 and scrub sizes for all employees on a regular basis would be valuable in allowing institutions and practices to assess worker needs. Universal second-line respirator fit testing would also improve PPE access in the case of first-line equipment depletion (as has occurred in many parts of the country during the COVID-19 pandemic). Finally, hospital and practice supply chains must similarly include the provision of appropriately sized gear to prevent future PPE and equipment shortages.

Accommodations for menstruating, pregnant, and breastfeeding providers

Inequities for cisgender women in medicine, in general and in the context of caring for COVID-19 patients, have extended beyond access to PPE. For example, menstruating nurses in China reported struggling to obtain access to hygiene products, making wearing full protective equipment during 12-hour shifts even more difficult. ¹⁷ Additionally, finding safe, clean places in hospitals for breastfeeding individuals to pump has long been a challenge, with many often resorting to using unsanitary supply closets or bathrooms. Some HCW, newly worried about the safety of transporting pumping equipment back and forth from the hospital given the ability of COVID-19 to survive for days on plastic surfaces, ¹⁸ elected to stop breastfeeding prematurely or to avoid it altogether, despite the potential health benefits to their offspring. ¹⁹ These additional stressors may contribute to the already heightened rates of burnout and depression observed in women HCW, who had increased rates of both of these mental health diagnoses compared with men even before the onset of the pandemic. ^20,21

All medical workplaces must be required to provide dedicated, safe, and clean places for breastfeeding providers to pump and store breastmilk that are regularly maintained, with ready access to cleaning supplies for sterilization of communal and personal equipment. Furthermore, efforts should be made to minimize the risk of infection for pregnant women and parents of newborn infants. Access to hygiene products should similarly be provided to staff. Given new data about the potential increased risk for severe COVID-19 in pregnant women, it may also be reasonable to minimize exposure risk for vulnerable employees where possible. ²²

Work–life balance and childcare

COVID-19 has forced many Americans to rethink the integration of their work and personal life. In many ways, the struggles of women HCW—a large proportion of who have found themselves wearing even more hats than usual over the past few months, including parent, employee, teacher, barber, caretaker, housekeeper, and chef—mirror those of the broader workforce. ²³ Particularly in the context of cisgender, heterosexual couples, women may be taking on a disproportionate burden of household responsibilities, which, in turn, may be contributing to the nearly millions of American women who have left the workforce since the onset of the pandemic. ²⁴

Roughly 40% of physicians are married to other physicians, and many more have significant others with jobs in health care and other essential services. ²⁵ Accordingly, dual-HCW partners have consistently run the risk of being assigned to work overlapping shifts, which may also coincide with other mandatory obligations, such as facilitating long-distance learning for children at home. Availability of childcare coverage, not to mention concerns about the safety of bringing an additional person into one’s home during a period of social distancing, has caused overwhelming anxiety for many HCW parents.

Moreover, variability in sick leave policies, as well as fears about what should happen if both partners were to become infected with COVID-19, has prompted updates to wills and careful designation of health care proxies. ²⁶ A lack of pay equity among physicians (with a persistent gender wage gap nationally—this gap was 27.7% in 2017 and 25.2% in 2018 ²⁷) has also led some women physicians, particularly those who are cisgender and in heterosexual relationships with traditional gender roles, to consider whether they should step away from their jobs and careers to provide adequate childcare and household support. Similar considerations have been documented among nurses ^28,29; these considerations reflect long-standing trends in gendered labor division within the home. ³⁰ This mindset is particularly concerning at a time when the United States is facing a critical shortage of skilled medical staff and risks further decreasing the numbers of women in academic medicine and leadership roles. ³¹ According to a recent report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, women have left jobs at 4 times the rate of men since the start of the pandemic. In September 2020 alone, 865,000 women dropped out of the labor force. ³² If forced to choose between career and personal or family safety, women may reasonably elect to leave the health care workforce, thus further undermining the national response to the pandemic.

By increasing access to and affordability of childcare options, HCW with families will be better able to serve at the bedside. Increased shift flexibility, adoption of telemedicine, and deployment strategies that account for single-parent and dual-HCW families will similarly support physicians, who have selflessly stepped into both familiar and new roles as COVID-19 cases have mounted.

Crisis and Opportunity

Crisis often spurs ingenuity. If past months of the pandemic have proven anything, it is that the health care system is capable of rapid, large-scale advancements under pressure. In a short span of time, field hospitals were built in metropolitan green spaces ³³ and health care systems doubled their bed capacity seemingly overnight. Labs were repurposed to investigate COVID-19, allowing for more scientists to study new treatments and preventive strategies. Specialists and subspecialists were deployed to COVID wards, intensive care units, and emergency rooms to scale care while maximizing patient safety. ³⁴ Physicians designed new equipment to protect themselves while intubating critically ill patients ³⁵ and brainstormed ways to stretch a limited supply of ventilators. ³⁶ If all of these initiatives were achievable, innovations specific to women on the frontlines also ought to be feasible to protect both their safety and ability to remain focused on the task at hand—fighting this pandemic.

Many health systems have been proactive in accommodating women providers as COVID-19 has ripped through their respective cities. They rapidly developed app platforms to aid access to childcare options, made accommodations for pregnant and breastfeeding HCW (e.g., by having them provide telemedicine rather than in-person clinical care), ³⁷ and increased opportunities for visibility (e.g., by promoting women to COVID-19 task force positions and welcoming input from nursing leadership, which tends to include more women representatives). ³⁸

Still, there is much more work to be done for women to achieve equity and optimal support in their roles on the frontlines. Health care can look to other industries for inspiration, including the military, which makes efforts to avoid deploying spouses simultaneously. Additionally, single-parent and dual-military families must put together a family care plan (FCP), detailing who will take care of the children in the event of a deployment. ³⁹ If a soldier is unable to put together a satisfactory FCP, the military can (and does) administratively discharge them. Perhaps similar structures could be put into place to ensure the safety and well-being of the children of HCW, without penalizing HCW themselves (this could be particularly valuable for single-parent HCW). Additionally, improvement in gender pay gaps has been achieved in other industries via state legislation that prohibits employers from asking potential employees about previous salary. Hospitals and practices could commit to this practice of not inquiring about prior compensation when hiring. ⁴⁰

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, there were numerous challenges in medicine, either specific to or with disproportionate impact on women HCW. This time period, however, has further underscored an urgent need for the medical community to take tangible steps to address existing inequities. It is imperative that women work together with their men colleagues to ensure the availability of correctly sized equipment and uniforms for all HCW, that there are appropriate accommodations for pregnant and breastfeeding providers, that there is access to childcare options, and that the medical community as a whole continues to advocate for equity in representation and compensation (Table 2). There are myriad opportunities for change; in this moment, those in leadership can and should leverage and scale the creative solutions that already exist in medicine and other fields to optimize working conditions and support for women HCW and their families.

Table 2.

Challenges With Disproportionate Impact on Women HCW: Implications of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Next Steps

Women are deeply proud to be serving on this frontline. They should be sent into battle with the knowledge that their loved ones are and will be cared for and that they are optimally equipped to deliver the best care possible to their patients.

Acknowledgments:

The authors wish to thank Janina R. Galler, MD, serving as their role model in academic medicine and for inspiring and encouraging them to become physicians and to write this piece.