Skip to main content

The politics of global challenges annual lecture - Gender fail during global health emergencies: WHO runs the world? - Professor Sara Davies and Dr Clare Wenham

Date
Date
Wednesday 28 October 2020, 12 noon
Location
Microsoft Teams

This year, the Centres for Global Security Challenges and Global Development hosted a joint annual lecture on the Politics of Global Challenges, relating directly to the current global health crisis. The lecture abstract and speaker biographies are available to read below the lecture recording video.

Gender fail during global health emergencies: WHO runs the world?

Abstract

During any kind of emergency neglect of gender experiences and needs can compromise the outbreak response. The Ebola outbreak in West Africa and the Zika outbreak in Latin America had gendered effects that were evident during the crises, yet governments and international organisations failed to prioritise gender inclusive responses. There is the same risk of neglecting gender inclusive responses and knowledge during the Covid-19 pandemic. In this talk we/I examine the consequence of gender exclusion in health emergency response. Where can we locate institutional responsibility to take gender seriously to inform and improve sustainable disease control?  The institutional responsibility to recognise gender within the global health emergency regime lies with the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO is in a position to support gender inclusion practices but it requires the technical agency to recognise the value of gender inclusion framework to inform outbreak response, financial models, and recovery.

Speakers

Dr Sara Davies is a Professor at School of Government and International Relations, Griffith University, Australia and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Gender Peace and Security Centre, School of Social Sciences, Monash University. Sara is an International Relations (IR) scholar with a specific focus on Global Health Governance and the Women, Peace and Security agenda. Sara has been an Australian Research Council Discovery Australian Postgraduate Award Scholar (2008-2012) and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow (2014-2018).

Sara’s research career has been devoted to identifying the political conditions that deny humans access to civil, economic and social human rights. Her research has focused on situations where humans face immense vulnerability: disease outbreaks events, gender-based and sexual violence in conflict, and forced displacement. Sara’s contribution to the International Relations discipline has been to advance feminist methods to deepen understanding of the conditions that lead to human insecurity and vulnerability and to understand how non-Western international institutions and norms, especially in the Indo-Pacific, shape political behaviour. Her research examines when and how international governance engages with the rights-based needs of populations at risk.

To date, her research has produced 3 sole authored books, one co-authored book, seven edited books, over 40 research publications and over $2.5 million research funding. She has published in Foreign Policy Analysis, International Affairs, Review of International Studies, Medical Law Review, and International Relations. Sara is co-editor of the Australian Journal and International Affairs and the Global Responsibility to Protect. Sara serves on the Research Board for the Australian Institute of International Affairs (2013-ongoing) and the Executive Board for the Global Health Section, International Studies Association (2014-ongoing).

Dr Clare Wenham is Assistant Professor of Global Health Policy. She is the Director of the MSc in Global Health Policy and sits on the steering committee of the LSE Global Health Initiative. She previously worked at the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, delivering a series of projects relating to surveillance and transmission of infectious disease. She has a PhD in International Relations at and has advised and/or consulted for UN Women, European Parliament, UNFPA, Asian Development Bank, and UK Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology.

Clare’s research examines global health security and global health governance from a political and policy perspective. Her recent research has analysed COVID-19, Zika, Ebola, and more broadly, on the governance structures of the global health landscape and global disease control. Within this, she has a particular interest on the downstream effects of global health security policy on women. Clare is currently co-PI on two major projects analysing how women are most at risk of COVID-19 and/or the socio-economic effects produced by government response efforts. The research seeks to understand how policies designed to mitigate against the pathogen cause disproportionate effects on women, such as through increased domestic load, formal and informal care-giving, interruption to sexual and reproductive health services, domestic violence and women’s economic empowerment.