Nurses with bruises from face masks.

Translation: Madeline Robinson

Nurses, cleaners, carers for the elderly, porters, assistants, specialists, doctors, cashiers. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that in this ‘war’ on Coronavirus, it’s perhaps women who are fighting hardest in the first line of fire, struggling cheek to cheek against the enemy. This is something of a novelty in ‘wartime’, which I put in quotation marks as there’s an argument yet to be had about using war terminology to refer to a pandemic. But given that the military jargon has already made its way into our discourse, it’s interesting to shine a spotlight on the vast numbers of women on the field of this battle.

Of course, there are also women and non-women giving it their all at the rear guard and in an infinite number of sectors involved in putting a stop to coronavirus: research, government, public transport, the police, the army, factories, distribution – the list goes on. But this time, in this viral world war, the number of women physically coming face to face with the adversary, breathing in its contaminated air, risking life and limb, is quite telling. In fact, the first victim in the healthcare system was a 52-year-old nurse in the Basque Country, who died after she tested positive for Covid-19.

Many of these workers, as you might expect, don’t earn what they should, but this is hardly surprising given that the least privileged are always expected to fulfil the same role: cannon fodder. The interesting thing from a military perspective is that these women are in the majority on the frontline. What’s interesting about that? Well firstly, that they’ve never been a majority before, despite women having fought in the Greek wars of Sparta and Athens in IV century B.C., in the siege of Constantinople in 626 and in both World Wars. And secondly, because the heroic deeds of women usually disappear from history all too quickly once the war is over.

Am I trying to belittle our troops? No. Should they build a monument to the people fighting in this battle? Given the insistance on the heroism of the healthcare system, it wouldn’t go amiss. We’ll see. In any case, and for now at least, their sacrifices are being acknowledged. Every evening at 8pm, while we’re out on our balconies applauding, we’re thinking of each and every nurse, porter, doctor, cleaner and carer out there.

They’re sticking their necks out for us – without masks on – in a war where breathing in the invisible enemy could do you in. In a war which, let´s remember, is not about killing but about caring, cleaning, healing, feeding. It’s about saving lives. Now the fields of battle are the hospitals, old people’s homes, hotels and exhibition centres converted into temporary hospitals due to the overload of sick patients and the tenacity of coronavirus.

Let’s look at the data from the 3^rd April. In Spanish territory, more than 17,000 people in the healthcare sector had been infected with the virus, some 14.6% of the total, and one of the primary causes was contact with patients due to lack of personal protective equipment: masks, scrubs, gloves and goggles. They’re making aprons out of bin bags. There aren’t enough respirators for the sick. There are no diagnostic tests. Are we sending them to battle without swords or shields?

I take a look at the latest data from the National Statistics Institute and in 2018, 68% of all registered healthcare professionals were women. A percentage which rockets up to 81% in Nursing: warrioresses in the first line of fire.

The percentage of women as carers for the elderly and cleaning staff is significant, and the number of infections among them is astounding. Almost half of female cleaning staff that work in Madrid’s hospitals are either infected or self-isolating. In care homes in Catalunya, they’ve registered more than 3000 infections.

War wounds?

I’ve taken the title for this article from the book by writer, journalist and Nobel Prize-winner Svetlana Alexievich, The Unwomanly Face of War. In the book, Alexievich shines a light on the nearly 1 milion women who served the Red Army in the Second World War, whose stories were never told. After the war ended, the women went back to domestic life and never spoke of their experience, perhaps only with close friends and even then in hushed tones. Alexievich collects the chilling testimonies of snipers, medics, sappers, antiaircraft gun commanders, machine gun operators and more. “Nobody has spoken about the female war, only the male war,” writes Alexievich, “In what these women tell us we don’t find the stories we’re used to reading and hearing: how some people heroically kill others and finally win. The stories of women are different and they tell of different things. They have their own words. In this war, there are no heroes or incredible deeds, just human beings involved in an inhumane task.” Just as inhumane then as it is now to feel obliged to hold the hands of the sick, the elderly, who have been left to die due to lack of resources. Just as humane.

With Alexievich’s writing ringing around my head, I rewatch some videos of female health workers that have been circulating on social media. In one of them, a young nurse with eyes like fog lamps on the edge of tears asks us not to leave the house and to look at her bruised, swollen face after ten hours of working with protection equipment. For this she also gives thanks, as “this thing is big. There are no beds, there are no respirators, there are no staff, there is no isolation equipment.” She’s not afraid to cry.

Sometimes I think about the liquidators of Chernobyl, who disinfected the radioactive nuclear centre wearing rudimentary protective suits. And sometimes, when I see people leaving hospital after long days at work, the bruises that the protective equipment leaves on their faces remind me of war paint. That’s right. Of this unwarlike war.

In another video, two women who work in a hospital in Cadiz sing a song with that Andalusian humour of theirs about how to disinfect rooms with bleach so as not to contaminate the next patient. “The female war has its colours, its smells, its light and its space,” says Alexievich. It also has its songs. And its dances, as in the reinterpretation of Single Ladies by Beyoncé in that glorious video – pure vitality. “They speak about the non-heroic part of the war,” asserts the Belorussian writer. But what is a hero? According to the dictionary, a hero is a “person who performs a very selfless act for the sake of a noble cause”. It surpised me, this definition which is so far away from ‘Supermen’ and proud monuments of soldiers on horseback. Have we forgotten about selflessness as a heroic trait? And having a good sense of humour? Or maybe its that a noble cause doesn’t consist of killing, but of curing, caring, cleaning, listening, spreading joy and saving lives?

Saving lives with sword and shield?

Nope.

Saving lives with mask and respirator.

Hence, the picture of these heroines painted by artista Franco Rivolli, now famous in Italy, becomes less inspiring. The painting is of a nurse with wings, a nursing angel cradling a map of Italy, swaddled in the Italian flag. A popular and enticing picture. But also an image that’s too meditative and spiritual when you consider the drive, the energy, the action and the bravery of these women – who I see as more officer Ripley-types from the film Alien. Clad in protective equipment with a respirator in hand – fighting the beast which got onto the ship by not obeying the quarantine…

Alright, now back to Earth. Not angels. Nor fictional space soldiers. Women. Humans. Mortals.

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