As one might expect, authors writing manuscripts about women’s health during the pandemic do not make earth shattering theoretical contributions. Similar to researchers studying natural disasters such as hurricanes, most conduct ex post facto research that is cross-sectional research in single locations. The greatest theoretical contribution in this collection is not about women’s health perse, but about the relationship between how health burden (such as what occurs during a pandemic) has a limiting effect of labor productivity. Read Mobosi’s work to understand why low and moderate income countries in Africa experienced greater health burdens and greater limits on productivity. Their theoretical contribution is greater because the research involved data from 48 countries. What we learn collectively from these researchers is that gender predicted access to health care and health care burden. Women and children had limited access to healthcare at the height of the pandemic, particularly so for those who were pregnant (Hassan Joulaei et al. and Mohammad Afshar et al.). Some women, however, were resilient and worked to combat burnout on the job and at home as caregivers.
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