Professor Letícia Marteleto discusses the ways that class informs women’s risks of contracting Zika and how governments and medical professionals should work to provide poor women equal preventative care:

Our findings suggest that, while incredibly concerned about Zika, wealthier women, much like Hope Solo, feel in control of preventing the virus by using repellant, netting their homes and postponing pregnancy. Poorer women have a more fatalistic attitude about getting infected with Zika and even about getting pregnant — a fact that can be verified by Brazil’s consistently high rate of unintended pregnancy, particularly among the lower classes.

Poorer women also feel that they can’t protect themselves as well as wealthy women can because they lack the means to do so (money to buy repellents and mosquito nets), and they recognize their living conditions make them more vulnerable to mosquito bites (particularly through exposure to open sewage and stagnant water).

Read more at the Austin-American Statesman!