Ebola, gender and conspicuously invisible women in global health governance

This paper examines the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa to highlight a central paradox in global health governance: while women are essential to the delivery of healthcare through both formal and informal roles, they remain conspicuously invisible in policy, strategy, and emergency planning. The author argues that global health institutions, such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank, rely on the unpaid, feminized labor of women to sustain health systems, yet they fail to recognize or value this labor in their official narratives and long-term health system strengthening plans.

The study employs a feminist political economy lens to analyze the rhetoric and policy responses surrounding the Ebola crisis. By reviewing scholarly literature, opinion pieces, and official documents from the WHO and World Bank between 2014 and 2015, the author identifies four dominant narratives regarding the outbreak: the U.S. response, the need for vaccines, the "perfect storm" of weak health infrastructure, and the failure of international institutional coordination. The author systematically demonstrates that across these narratives, gender is either ignored or reduced to a narrow focus on maternal health, effectively erasing the broader structural contributions and risks faced by women as caregivers.

The paper contends that this "conspicuous invisibility" is not merely an oversight but a form of male bias that assumes health systems can function without accounting for the gendered nature of care. By failing to integrate gender-aware planning, institutions miss the opportunity to address the specific vulnerabilities of women who act as first responders and primary caregivers. The author concludes that until global health governance moves beyond instrumentalizing women as mothers and begins to value the informal care economy, health systems will remain precarious and overly dependent on the uncompensated labor of women.