On this episode we are delighted to be joined by Dr Brunah Schall, post-doctoral researcher at Fiocruz Minas in Brazil, and Dr Julia Smith, assistant professor at Simon Fraser University in Canada. We hear from our speakers about the gendered dynamics of the Covid-19 pandemic, focusing on research which has been conducted in Brazil and Canada as part of the multi-country Gender and Covid-19 project.  

We cover topics including:  

• The economic impact of the pandemic on women, who took on a disproportionate amount of unpaid care work and took longer to re-enter the workforce  
• Female health workers’ experiences of racism, misogyny, stigma and violence on the frontline 
• How research from the Gender and Covid-19 project is influencing policy across countries

Dr Brunah Schall

Postdoc, Fiocruz Minas

Brunah is a biologist with a PhD in Sociology from Brazil. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Fiocruz Minas, working on projects on gender and health, especially the international project Gender and Covid-19, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Her research focuses on women from vulnerable settings in urban and rural communities in Brazil, highlighting the effects of the pandemic in their livelihoods, food security and overall health with the purpose of connecting them with policy makers.  

https://www.genderandcovid-19.org/staging/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/PAC00487_Gender-Covid-19-Brazil-food-insecurity-English.pdf(link is external)(opens in a new tab) 

https://www.genderandcovid-19.org/staging/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/PAC00519_Gender-Covid-19-Health-Workers-Brazil-1.pdf(link is external)(opens in a new tab) 

https://www.genderandcovid-19.org/staging/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/gender-and-race-on-the-frontline.pdf(link is external)(opens in a new tab) 

https://www.genderandcovid-19.org/staging/resources/the-pandemic-response-plan-in-brazil-must-include-a-critical-perspective-on-gender-and-race-2/(link is external)(opens in a new tab) 

https://www.genderandcovid-19.org/staging/editorial/water-is-life-the-struggle-of-quilombola-women-for-access-to-water-in-the-midst-of-the-covid-19-pandemic-in-brazil/(link is external)(opens in a new tab) 

Dr Julia Smith

Assistant Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University

Dr Julia Smith(link is external)(opens in a new tab) is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University. She has a PhD in Social and International Studies from the University of Bradford, where she also completed her Masters of Arts as a Rotary World Peace Fellow. Her research interests centre on gender-based policy analysis of health crises, commercial and political determinants of health, feminist theory and community-based research. She is currently a Principal Investigator on the Gender and COVID-19 Research Project(link is external)(opens in a new tab), which is conducting gender-based analysis of the response to COVID-19 in multiple countries and is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Canadian Institutes for Health Research. She has also led research on the intersections of health and development, funded by SSHRC, and contributed to the Global Tobacco Control Project at SFU, funded by CIHR and the US National Institutes of Health Research. Dr. Smith has taught classes in both the Faculty of Health Sciences and Department of Political Science at SFU. She is a board member of Women Transforming Cities, volunteers with Mosaic, and has worked with community-based organizations in Canada, Europe and Africa.  

https://www.lstmed.ac.uk/news-events/media/s6e3-gendered-dynamics-of-the-covid-19-pandemic