Why we Need a Gender Advisor on SAGE

Abstract

The UK government has largely failed to consider gender in its COVID-19 response, despite the many and varied differential impacts of policy interventions on women and men. Since government policy is informed by the advice ministers receive, we sought to understand whether and how gender had been considered by the UK government's COVID-19 Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE). This paper uses two forms of policy analysis to assess 73 SAGE meeting minutes and background documents for 1) the explicit references to sex and/or gender, and 2) references to issues evidenced in the literature to be gendered, to understand whether the gendered implications of policy were considered. We find that the acknowledgement of the gendered dynamics of particular issues, such as school closures and feminised (or masculinised) employment sectors, were largely absent in SAGE meeting minutes and that explicit references to women were largely of a biological (sex) nature, rather than social (gender). Over time we saw increased references to the gendered impacts of policy in meeting background documents, though these references largely reproduced gendered stereotypes and roles rather than actively engaging with the gender issues. However, not all blame can be put at the feet of SAGE members, who did show awareness of equity issues and were predominantly epidemiologists and behavioural scientists likely untrained in gender analysis. SAGE members are selected based on the government's framing of the type of emergency at hand, and COVID-19 has been treated by the government as a an epidemiological emergency, rather than a social, political and economic one. We argue that reframing emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic in a more holistic way enables us to redefine the scientific advice deemed necessary for SAGE membership, and facilitates the inclusion of gender advisors to mitigate the downstream gendered impacts of nonpharmaceutical interventions associated with the government's COVID-19 response.

“I Was Facilitating Everybody Else’s Life. And Mine Had Just Ground to a Halt”: The COVID-19 Pandemic and its Impact on Women in the United Kingdom

“…Although under the Equality Act (2010) the UK government is required to ensure that all policy produced undergoes an impact assessment, the government has refused to publish its assessments. At the same time as the COVID-19 COVID-19 Pandemic and Its Impact on Women in the United Kingdom policies were being developed, the UK government halted the requirement for organizations to report gender-pay gap data, and the Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE) rarely considered gender or women in its advice on NPIs (Wenham and Herten-Crabb 2021). This is reflective of the broader position given to gender issues within the current administration, which has not only reduced capacity and funding to the Government Equalities Office (GEO) within the Cabinet Office (UK Government 2020a), but also saw the merging of the position of the Secretary of State for Women and Equalities with the function of the Minister of International Trade for much of the pandemic, the latter being of much more importance during Brexit negotiations, and thus time commitment to government activities.…”

“…While many women noted the absence of women's voices in daily press briefings and decision-making bodies, we know that simply "adding women and stirring" does not inevitably lead to gender-responsive policy (Wenham and Herten-Crabb 2021). It is for this reason that gender mainstreaming initiatives through institutional setups such as the GEO and equality impact assessments (EIAs) are necessary in the development of policy.…”

Knowledge, Expertise and Science Advice During COVID-19: In Search of Epistemic Justice for the ‘Wicked’ Problems of Post-Normal Times

“…It may also explain the conspicuous lack of attention to the complexity, interdependencies and ramifications of the measures advocated. A clear example were work from home and school closure mandates, advised (and imposed) without attention to the incompatibility of these demands for parents, especially women (Wenham and Herten-Crabb 2021 ).…”

“…Gender bias may explain why certain policies amplified pre-existing gender-based inequities. For example, lockdowns mandates exacerbated women’s pre-existing economic precarity, as their traditional role as main caretakers within the family were not fully accounted, resulting in increased caring responsibilities and higher levels of income loss compared to men (Wenham and Herten-Crabb 2021 ). Failure to account for intersectional needs constitutes a form of hermeneutical injustice linked to intelligibility deficits of women, whose lived realities were not adequately represented within policy communities.…”

“…Through the analytical lens of (super) wicked problem (Levin et al 2012 ; Rittel and Webber 1973 ), the paper demonstrates how the framing of COVID-19 as a largely biomedical crisis may explain the narrow expertise mobilised through science advisory bodies the world over (Grundmann 2021 ; Priola and Pecis 2020 ; Rajan et al 2020 ; Singh 2020 ; Wenham and Herten-Crabb 2021 ). This matters epistemologically: besides the obvious exclusion of talent, non-participatory processes of science advice make it more difficult to escape scientific bias.…”