Risk and intersectional power relations: an exploration of the implications of early COVID-19 pandemic responses for pregnant women Risk and intersectional power relations: an exploration of the implications of early COVID-19 pandemic responses for pregnant women
The World Health Organization and many national health authorities identifie pregnant women as requiring extra protections during the COVID-19 global pandemic. Nevertheless, many initial responses to the COVID-19 pandemic were implemented in ways that have disrupted the care and support women receive and provide during pregnancy. In this article, I apply an intersectional approach to explore the unintended implications of discourses and practices targeting universal risks of COVID-19 for pregnant women. I discuss three overlapping topics. First, pandemic responses that aimed to negate the universal risk of COVID-19 transmission created obstacles to maternal health care that disproportionately impacted low-income women and regions. For example, rapidly changing public health mandates that were intended to protect the population from the universal threat of COVID-19 have produced unintended results of restricting public transportation, and consequently, access to maternal care. Second, overly precautious healthcare practices aimed at protecting foetuses and new-borns from possible risks can harm women and their new-borns. Recommendations, such as separating women from their new-borns at birth to prevent the spread of COVID-19, are shown to be often entangled with racism and colonialism. Third, in neoliberal contexts, dominant discourses have constructed privileged women as ‘normal’ in a way that responsibilised all women to minimise health risks for their foetuses. Such recommendations ignore inequalities in women’s living conditions and ability to follow public health advice about COVID-19. I argue that responses to COVID-19 were (dis)organised within pre-existing economic, racial, colonial, and patriarchal power relations that disadvantaged some pregnant women more than others.
The World Health Organization and many national health authorities identifie pregnant women as requiring extra protections during the COVID-19 global pandemic. Nevertheless, many initial responses to the COVID-19 pandemic were implemented in ways that have disrupted the care and support women receive and provide during pregnancy. In this article, I apply an intersectional approach to explore the unintended implications of discourses and practices targeting universal risks of COVID-19 for pregnant women. I discuss three overlapping topics. First, pandemic responses that aimed to negate the universal risk of COVID-19 transmission created obstacles to maternal health care that disproportionately impacted low-income women and regions. For example, rapidly changing public health mandates that were intended to protect the population from the universal threat of COVID-19 have produced unintended results of restricting public transportation, and consequently, access to maternal care. Second, overly precautious healthcare practices aimed at protecting foetuses and new-borns from possible risks can harm women and their new-borns. Recommendations, such as separating women from their new-borns at birth to prevent the spread of COVID-19, are shown to be often entangled with racism and colonialism. Third, in neoliberal contexts, dominant discourses have constructed privileged women as ‘normal’ in a way that responsibilised all women to minimise health risks for their foetuses. Such recommendations ignore inequalities in women’s living conditions and ability to follow public health advice about COVID-19. I argue that responses to COVID-19 were (dis)organised within pre-existing economic, racial, colonial, and patriarchal power relations that disadvantaged some pregnant women more than others.