In the Caribbean, women are the backbone of health care and social systems, yet they remain critically undervalued and marginalised across multiple dimensions of care and policy.
At a recent panel during the Contributions to the XVI Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, researchers unveiled the complex challenges facing women in the region’s health care and social landscapes.
Dr Taraleen Malcolm brought to light the fundamental disconnect in health care leadership. “Care work, whether paid or unpaid, remains undervalued and disproportionately falls on women,” she explained.
The statistics are telling: women comprise 70 per cent of the global health care workforce, yet occupy just 25 per cent of senior management positions. In Latin America, the disparity is even more pronounced: while women make up 72.8 per cent of the health care workforce and 87 per cent of nursing staff, they hold less than 30 per cent of management positions.
Malcolm was particularly critical of how this leadership gap translates into policy failures.
“This gap results in policies that often fail to address specific needs of women in the health sector,” she noted.
The COVID-19 pandemic brutally exposed these systemic weaknesses, with Malcolm highlighting how “women workers in general faced increased caregiving burdens, sometimes unsafe working conditions, and many were forced to leave the workforce”.
Dr Frédérique Dorleans brought another layer of complexity through her research on Chlordecone contamination in the French Caribbean.
“Around 90 per cent of the population was impregnated with Chlordecone,” she revealed, detailing how this environmental threat has had “a multi-dimensional impact in the French Caribbean society.”
For women farmers, the consequences have been particularly severe. Dorleans pointed out a critical research gap: “There is still this blind spot regarding women’s pathology associated with Chlordecone contamination,” which “impairs access to social compensation and specific resources for women.”
Dr Natasha Mortley expanded the conversation to migration and climate vulnerability. “Globally, women and girls make up between 52 to 60 per cent of displaced persons,” she explained, with the Caribbean following this trend. Her research revealed the human cost of displacement, noting how natural disasters force entire communities to move. In one poignant example, she shared a woman’s experience: “One woman told me she had not spoken about her experience in the five years since Hurricane Maria, and that the interview was therapeutic.”
Mortley was particularly critical of the region’s lack of gender-responsive planning.
“We are hurricane prone,” she emphasised, “There is an intensity of hurricanes and natural disasters but we’re still scrambling with evacuations and people being displaced.”
A unifying thread emerged across these presentations: the urgent need for comprehensive, gender-sensitive policies.
As Malcolm stressed “The future of care work, health systems, and innovation in the Caribbean must be shaped by inclusive and sustainable policies.”
“By addressing health workforce shortages, valuing care work, integrating gender equity, and ensuring LGBTQI+ plus inclusion in policy frameworks, we can build resilient systems that respond to crisis and advance social justice and sustainable development,” Malcolm added. (DDS)
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