Feminist pandemic preparedness: women and the political economy of health security

Abstract This article explores how women are integrated into pandemic preparedness measures to deliver health security. The article pursues this aim by developing the idea of feminist pandemic preparedness, an idea explicitly drawn from the interconnections between feminist international political economy (IPE) and feminist security studies (FSS). Feminist pandemic preparedness seeks to reframe the central dilemma of pandemic preparedness–how to reconcile public health security needs with state economic interests–to how to reconcile public health security initiatives with the political economic lives of women. The article pursues this contribution in two parts. Part one situates the idea of feminist pandemic preparedness within existing debates on global health security, securitization of health, and the relationship between emerging scholarship on feminist health security, feminist security studies, and feminist IPE. Part two explores how women are being integrated into existing pandemic preparedness measures: 1) the World Health Organization (WHO)'s reform of the International Health Regulations (IHR2005), Pandemic Agreement, and Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response; and 2) the World Bank's Pandemic Fund; and 3) and Africa CDC's Partnerships for African Vaccine Manufacturing (PAVM).