Oct 9, 2019

Pregnant women often don't get key vaccines

Marisa Fernandez

65% of pregnant women in the U.S. said they were unvaccinated for influenza and whooping cough, according to a Vital Signs report released on Tuesday by the CDC.

Why it matters: Only 9% of women in the U.S. ages 15–44 become pregnant each year. But pregnant women accounted for at least 34% of influenza-related hospitalizations each season between 2010 and 2018.

  • Newborns who contract influenza or whooping cough are at a high risk of hospitalization and death, as they are too young to be vaccinated.

For both vaccines, lack of vaccination coverage affected women with lower socioeconomic status, black women, those who were publicly insured or who lived in the South.

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Dion Rabouin

Women's equality reframed

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

Slowing global growth and stagnating investment returns have created a fertile environment for a novel idea: gender equality. It has been front and center at the autumn IMF-World Bank meetings — now framed not as an altruistic appeal, but as an economic imperative.

Why it matters: New IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva looks to be bringing that imperative to the economic policy focused Fund rather than the philanthropically minded Bank, a major change for how issues of diversity and equality are viewed.

Go deeperArrowOct 18, 2019
Miriam Kramer

Why an all-female spacewalk took so long

NASA astronaut Christina Koch takes a selfie during a spacewalk. Photo: NASA

As NASA aims to make spaceflight more inclusive and equitable, outdated ideas about women and their fitness for certain aspects of spaceflight still persist.

Driving the news: During a press briefing ahead of the historic all-female spacewalk on Friday, NASA's acting associate administrator for human exploration Ken Bowersox suggested that it took this long for two women to go on a spacewalk together in part because women's bodies aren't as fit for spacewalking as men's.

Go deeperArrowOct 22, 2019
Kia Kokalitcheva

Women still own way less startup equity than men

Adapted from Carta; Chart: Andrew Witherspoon/Axios

Female entrepreneurs have less equity in their own companies than do male entrepreneurs, according to a new report from Carta.

Why it matters: This directly contributes to the gender wealth gap.

Go deeperArrowNov 4, 2019