Addressing the knock-on effect of Covid-19 on women, girls

By Ladi C. Yakubu

PEOPLE have long debated the gendered impacts of disease outbreaks. Of course,  pandemic affects everyone, everywhere. But it affects different groups of people differently, deepening existing inequalities. While current data suggests that there do appear to be sex differences in mortality and vulnerability to the ongoing Covid-19 disease outbreak, with more men than women dying, potentially due to sex-based immunological or gendered differences, the pandemic is having devastating social and economic consequences for women and girls particularly those living in crisis and conflict affected contexts. To be sure, health emergencies demonstrate that women’s traditional role as caregivers for sick family members often increases their exposure to infectious diseases through person-to-person contact and Covid-19 is not an exemption. We have examples also in the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak, the 2002-03 SARS epidemic, and India’s 2018 fight against Nipah virus in Kerala. In all these cases, large numbers of caregiving girls and women were infected. For instance, what do pandemic patients need? Looking after. What do self-isolating older people need? Looking after. What do children kept home from school need? Looking after. All this looking after—this unpaid caring labor—will fall more heavily on women, because of the existing structure of the workforce. “It’s not just about social norms of women performing care roles; it’s also about practicalities,” as succinctly put by Wenham, a researcher during the Ebola crisis.

In her findings, more women died of obstetric complications than the infectious disease itself because resources were diverted from sexual and reproductive health care. But these deaths, like the unnoticed caring labor on which the modern economy runs, attract less attention than the immediate problems generated by an epidemic. We also know that the recommendation on social distancing has deep and grave gender implications especially because for so many women across the globe, home is not a place of safety. To put it differently, quarantine itself has left women more vulnerable to increased domestic violence. In this wise, stress, alcohol consumption, and financial difficulties are all considered triggers for violence in the home, and the quarantine measures being imposed around the world will increase all three. Domestic violence is already a major health problem,  according to the World Health Organization, with one in three women around the world experiencing physical or sexual violence, mostly from an intimate partner. Besides, as individuals, communities and families are isolated, and the delivery of essential services are limited by the current pandemic, many women and girls are even further exposed to male violence. Also, due to lockdown measures, victims of intimate partner violence are confined at home with their abusers, with less possibilities of seeking help without further putting their lives at risk.

As the Covid-19 pandemic rages around the globe, governments are taking unprecedented measures to limit the spread of the virus, ramping up health system responses and announcing movement restrictions affecting millions. But amid these efforts, policymakers must not lose sight of the vulnerabilities of women and girls, which have been exacerbated by the crisis. For too long, excuses for not using a gender lens during health emergencies have impeded the responses we most need. To protect us all, this time must be different. Extraordinary times, they say, call for extraordinary measures, and, as seen by the actions of the appropriate authorities in the last few weeks, the usual mandates for gender balance and equality have already fallen by the wayside. It hardly seems like a time to complain about this; after all, there are lives at stake. However, if gender cannot be part of the conversation during a crisis, when can it be? In any case, we know that women are  disproportionately affected by disasters, with crises exploiting structural inequalities that affect preparedness, response, impact, number of deaths, and recovery.

Reality has shown that people seldom learn from history and to fail to learn from history is to allow history to repeat itself! In order to deal meaningfully with the present, it is a worthwhile exercise to analyse the past and see how well we have fared. Hence, to reframe our pandemic response with gender at the center, we need, first, to protect and support the global health workforce, 70% of whom are women. It is crucial that these health workers are trained, resourced, and equipped, which means filling global shortages in protective gear like medical masks and gloves, so that they and their patients are adequately protected. It also means tackling the 28% gender pay gap in the global health workforce and ensuring decent and safe working environments with proper protective equipment. This will prevent interruptions in service delivery by ensuring health workers themselves don’t fall ill thus promoting retention as they work around the clock to fight Covid-19. Additionally, we must dismantle the discriminatory system that excludes women health workers from the decision-making bodies that initiate life-saving emergency protocols in health-care settings.

We must also explore the way traditional gender roles shape how people of all gender identities and backgrounds experience Covid-19. This means going beyond preliminary data from China that suggests Covid-19 infections are slightly higher among men than women. It also means that we need to assess what makes girls, women, boys, men, and non-binary people vulnerable in the first place. Knowing this enables caregivers to understand the importance of reinforcing preventive measures in their households, and of reporting cases when symptoms first appear. Governments also need to prioritize services for the prevention of and response to increased domestic violence and other forms of gender-based violence, particularly in the context of self-isolation, A pandemic magnifies all existing inequalities, and with women playing an outsized role responding to Covid-19 as frontline healthcare workers, caregivers at home, and as mobilizers in their communities, it is clear that if we truly want to deliver health, wellbeing, and dignity for all, girls and women must be front and center in the emergency responses, in social and economic recovery efforts, and in how we strengthen our health systems post-pandemic. In confronting Covid-19 and going forward, we must note the truth in the position of the United Nations that “putting women and girls at the centre of economies will fundamentally drive better and more sustainable development outcomes for all, support a more rapid recovery, and place us back on a footing to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.”

• Yakubu is of the Department of Mass Communication, Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, Nigeria.

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