An exploration into Black and Asian healthcare workers in the United Kingdom's National Health Service being disproportionally affected by Covid-19

Using postcolonial feminist theory, the reasons for the higher numbers of deaths of Black and Brown (B&B) people in the UK and the higher death rate of B&B female healthcare workers is examined. Based on their colonial history, the gender of B&B women is constructed in a way that is racialised and disadvantaged. B&B women have been made invisible, powerless, and used only when necessary to provide a service to the white colonial masters, both male and female. The Windrush scandal and Black Lives Matter are contemporary Race-based examples of resistance to these power relations that are still in place today. British colonial power laid the foundations for the institutional racism that is perpetuated and sustained within nursing and the National Health Service (NHS). The way that the British government used the NHS and responded to the pandemic has shed light on the racially-based inequalities and social determinants of health that exist in society and for female B&BHCWs.