National Public Health Institute of Finland

• On National Public Radio’s “It’s Been a Minute,” panelists discussing “Barbie” speculated about whether toxic femininity exists as the opposite of toxic masculinity.
• On Fox News, conservative panelist Douglas Murray associated the movie – which he admitted to not having seen – with toxic femininity.
• Examining how toxic femininity means different things to different people reveals important insights about gender, power and how language affects our well-being.

Toxic masculinity

• First, it’s important to consider the role the predecessor of toxic femininity – “toxic masculinity” – has played in U.S. culture.
• Cultural studies scholar Carol Harrington warns that labeling the outgrowths of patriarchy and misogyny as toxic masculinity shifts responsibility from harmful social systems to the behavior of “‘backward’ and ‘mentally unwell’ men,” making sexism an individual, rather than societal, problem.
• Nevertheless, when critics talk about toxic masculinity they are invoking a term that has had a mostly consistent meaning for 30 years.

The many faces of toxic femininity

• Psychologists such as Meaghan Rice see toxic femininity as the inverse of toxic masculinity – a constellation of characteristics like meekness, emotionalism, passivity and self-sacrifice.
• In this formulation, toxic masculinity and toxic femininity are both fueled by sexism, and each erodes human thriving.
• This version presents toxic femininity as a woman’s version of the domineering individualism that drives toxic masculinity.
• Toxic femininity is regarded as equally dangerous to men – or even more – as toxic masculinity is to women.

Beyond a toxic gender binary

• In her examination of popular discussions of toxic masculinity and femininity, McCann argues that what makes gender ideology toxic is rigidity – adherence to an inflexible gender binary.
• Gender norms are scripts that direct people to behave in ways that are consistent with one group’s ideas about what it means to be a woman or a man.

• The phase 2 trial in Burkina Faso is managed by Clinical Pharma Solutions Inc. based in Ontario, Canada.
• View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220929005141/en/
  Phase 2 Clinical Trial Participant (Photo credit: CNRFP)
  Were thrilled that recruitment for our Phase 2 trial of our COVID-19 DNA vaccine was completed so quickly by Dr. Adamas team in Burkina Faso.
• Formulated using Entos Fusogenix PLV delivery platform, Covigenix is a DNA vaccine encoding SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein and two genetic adjuvants engineered to stimulate the adaptive and innate immune systems.
• The ongoing Phase 2 trial was preceded by a first-in-human Phase 1 study conducted in Canada.

• The Saving Lives and Livelihoods commitment to purchase 65 million vaccine doses was instrumental in enabling the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust to negotiate and secure 510 million doses for Africa from vaccine manufacturers.
• The initiative also helped inform the decision of African Union Heads of State to designate the Africa CDC as an autonomous public health agency.
• Speaking at the one-year commemoration, Reeta Roy, President and CEO of the Mastercard Foundation, highlighted that the next phase of the Saving Lives and Livelihoods initiative would focus on turning vaccine delivery into vaccinations.
• The African Union and Africa CDC, under the Saving Lives and Livelihoods initiative, recently launched an initiative called Bingwa (a Swahili word meaning champion) to recruit young people as vaccine advocates in their communities.

• NACCHO represents our country's nearly 3,000 local health departments and their approximately 150,000 workers.
• We cannot count the number of vaccine-preventable illnesses that didn't take hold, because local health departments offered free vaccinations to their communities.
• And we can't count how many new moms delivered healthy babies because of interventions by their local health department.
• The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) represents the country's nearly 3,000 local health departments.