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Health

Women in Healthcare Can’t Strike Today Because People Would Die

But here's what it would look like if they did.

On this year's International Women's Day, women around the world are planning to participate in a massive strike known as A Day Without A Woman. Although there are multiple ways to get involved (women are urged to spend no money and to wear red in solidarity), those who are able to are urged to skip work. While there are myriad reasons why that may not be an option for some (many folks cannot afford to lose a day's pay or may actually lose their jobs), those who work in healthcare face another conundrum: If all female healthcare professionals went on strike for a day, hospitals, nursing homes, and clinics would completely shut down and thousands of people would die.

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There are more than 3 million registered nurses (RNs) and 800,000 licensed practical nurses (LPNs) currently active in the US, and 83 percent of them are women. In some states, this number is as high as 90 percent. 1.5 million individuals work as nursing assistants, and although the lack of licensing for some of these positions makes gender statistics harder to come by, the vast majority of them are women. There are about 174,000 nurse practitioners (NPs) in the US who provide a wide range of care. Many of them cover primary care services for individuals who would otherwise have no access because they live in rural areas with very few primary care physicians. A full 87 percent of them are women. In addition, 63 percent of the 90,000 physician assistants (PAs) in the US are women, as are 34 percent of the 925,000 physicians. (It is important to remember that like all statistics about gender, this census does not accurately account for all trans or non-binary folks, as most government forms do not allow for sufficiently diverse identification options.) To put an even finer point on it: A recent study suggests that Medicare patients treated by female doctors have slightly lower readmission and mortality rates than those treated by males.

I have worked at sexual and reproductive healthcare clinics (including Planned Parenthood) where the entire staff was made of up women and non-binary folks. A substance abuse clinic where I worked for years would have been completely unable to provide methadone or buprenorphine if the all-woman nursing staff didn't show up to work. Every nursing school across the country would shut down if their (mostly female) faculty went on strike, and the scene that would unfold at every single hospital in the US is unimaginably bleak. The fact is, healthcare cannot survive without women. And unlike other professional sectors, healthcare actually cannot survive one day without women.

One of the goals of A Day Without A Woman is to underscore the detrimental effect that women striking has on the economy. This is an important goal and I support it. However, many healthcare professionals across the country will not participate in the strike despite standing in solidarity, as they realize that the lack of women would lead to the loss of life. For all those who cannot skip work, I propose another way to support this strike: If you're able, I urge you to redirect funds that you would have spent on superfluous purchases to healthcare organizations that provide necessary services to underserved folks and are overwhelmingly staffed by women, like Planned Parenthood, your local LGBTQ and HIV/AIDS clinics, and intimate partner violence shelters. Kicking the economy where it hurts is important, but let's not forget to show up for vital healthcare organizations that are already hurting.