Many people have said that women and girls are disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, and I know later on we'll hear from other colleagues further on some of those issues.
We know that gender equality is also one of the inequalities that have been exacerbated in this pandemic. For example, the health of women is adversely impacted through reallocation of resources and priorities including sexual reproduction health services and maternal health services.
We know that unpaid care work has increased. We know, for example, particularly with children out of school—and I can attest to this as a working mother here in Canada—that there have been challenges, and those challenges are reflected around the world.
But at the same time, in many contexts, including conflict in crisis contexts, the responsibility for ensuring that children get vaccinated falls on women, on mothers, on grandmothers, on aunts, or on older sisters sometimes, and so as Canada looks to support vaccine readiness, there must be a specific effort to empower and equip women really to look at vaccine misinformation.
So really ensuring that women, whether it's mothers or grandmothers or women's associations at community levels, have the information to really fight vaccine misinformation at the community level, and ensuring that, when we are looking at equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, local women's organizations and networks, again at that community level, are consulted to ensure that COVID-19 vaccines reach the most vulnerable are critical parts of readiness.
The other element I would highlight is that it's estimated that 70% of front-line health workers in these contexts are women, and so this means that many women will be taking responsibility for safely distributing and administering COVID-19 vaccines. These health workers are putting themselves on the front line of COVID-19 distribution and they must be protected through adequate training on, for example, vaccine storage, cold chains, distribution and administration, and also ensure that they're equipped with PPE.
They also need to be provided priority access to COVID-19 vaccination themselves so that as they're protecting other people's right to health, their own health is protected.