Old, female and COVID-19+: issues of age and gender in the midst of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

Although it is still unclear whether COVID-19 infected elderly people more than young people, seniors fell victim to it more frequently and severely. This exploratory sample study addresses the impact of the pandemic on the socially vulnerable group of older women, by analysing their representation in supranational institutional publications. To do so, documents were collected from the WHO website that dealt with COVID-19, women and older people. Findings show that very few of these documents deal with older women and COVID-19. Those that do were examined discursively following a CDS qualitative approach. The analysis suggests that older women are little investigated, and that more qualitative studies are needed to explore their presence in supranational institutional discourse, if material is quantitatively limited.