The impact of Coronavirus on women

A guidance note released by the United Nations for Population Fund (UNFPA) says that amidst the efforts to curb the spread of the  corona virus pandemic, policy makers must not loose sight of the vulnerabilities of women and girls, which have been exacerbated by the pandemic. Also, an online article by Medecin San Frontiers, pointed out that the corona virus (COVID-19) pandemic is having potentially catastrophic secondary impacts on the health of women and girls around the world. Another article on the UNDP website says that while the COVID-19 crisis affects everyone, women and girls face specific additional risks due to deeply entrenched inequalities, social norms, and unequal power relations. 

Women may face heightened risk of exposure to COVID-19 due to their disproportional representation among health-care and social service personnel. Around the world, about 70 per cent of health and social service workers are women. Many are midwives, nurses or community health workers, roles that place them on the front lines of any disease outbreak. Efforts made at every level of the response to the pandemic are resulting in women being further cut off from sexual and reproductive health services, threatening sharp rises in maternal and neonatal mortality.

A significant lesson from the West Africa Ebola outbreak of 2014-2016  is that the biggest threat to women’s and girls’ lives was not the Ebola virus, but the shutdown of routine health services and people’s fear of going to health facilities where they could get infected.Thousands more lives were lost when safe delivery, neonatal, and family planning services became inaccessible due to the outbreak. In the 2015-2016 Zika outbreak, women faced significant barriers to health care due to lack of autonomy over their own sexual and reproductive health, inadequate access to health services, and insufficient financial resources. Right now, we are witnessing the same dynamics on a much larger scale. 

The coronavirus pandemic could exact a significant toll on women’s livelihoods, as school closures increase the burden of domestic care that typically falls to women, and as travel restrictions affect service industries and informal labour dominated by female workers. 

Epidemics and their attendant stresses can also increase the risk of domestic abuse and other forms of gender-based violence. The economic effects of the Ebola outbreak, for instance, led to increased sexual exploitation risks for women and children. Today, as families face heightened tensions, financial uncertainties and other pressures, women and girls face intensified vulnerabilities. There is increased rape incidences all over the world, as at June 2020, there were about 717 reported rape cases in Nigeria.

The Human Development Report Office in collaboration with the Gender Team at UNDP, presents new Dashboards on the Gender Inequality and the COVID-19 crisis with a Human Development perspective. They show how the pandemic puts women’s human development at risk and affects their crisis preparedness. It also highlights women’s ability to tackle the effects of the pandemic and associated economic crisis for themselves.

The team recommended that supporting gender analysis and sex-disaggregated data should be an integral part of a strong COVID-19 response. However, despite the huge efforts made to monitor the spread and impact of the virus, significant gaps persist. We urgently need reporting data disaggregated by sex, age, residence, race, ethnicity and other key characteristics. They concluded that the strongest policy responses that enable girls and women to better weather and recover from future crises will require a solid foundation in data.

Dashboard Sources:

https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/blog/2020/what-does-coronavirus-mean-for-women.