Children and COVID-19 Research Library

The overlapping impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, accelerating climate disasters, and geopolitical conflict are a threat to gender equality and women’s rights across the globe. This report from UN Women and UNDP shows what governments can do now to prevent further rollbacks and recover lost ground, while enhancing resilience and preparedness for future shocks. Drawing on a unique global dataset of close to 5,000 measures adopted by 226 countries and territories in response to COVID-19, the report finds that, overall, government responses paid insufficient attention to gender dynamics. At the same time, instances of innovation and learning hold important lessons for gender-responsive policymaking in times of crisis.

Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the lingering effects of the crisis are multidimensional, even in countries where the virus did not spread widely. For women and girls, existing gender inequalities and socioeconomic barriers have only been exacerbated. To assess the gendered consequences of the pandemic, UN Women and the Asian Development Bank worked with national governments to roll out Rapid Gender Assessment Surveys in seven countries in Asia and the Pacific. The survey findings showcase that women have been more likely than men to quit their jobs to take up unpaid family responsibilities, have been disproportionately affected by food hardship and, in some countries, have been less likely than men to receive vaccines. The data provided in this report is useful for governments, civil society and international institutions to continue to design targeted crisis response and recovery programming to support women and girls across Asia and the Pacific. The report is a follow-up publication to “Unlocking the Lockdown”, which UN Women published in 2020.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated worldwide economic decline, East and Southern Africa (ESA) has suffered job losses and an increase in poverty, interruptions in healthcare services, and declined nutrition levels. Young adults whose place in the labor market is often informal, temporary, and tenuous at best have suffered greater job and income losses than their parents. As part of ensuring that recovery efforts also reduce the number of youth, especially young women, not in employment, education, or training (NEET), UN Women in ESA commissioned a quantitative study on the NEET status of youth aged 15-24 years in nine countries in the region. This report summarizes the country findings and provides a detailed analysis of available NEET data for youth aged 15-24 years with a view to supporting evidence-based policy advocacy and action in this area. The study covers Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, and Uganda.

This publication compiles and analyses the results of Rapid Gender Assessment surveys (RGAs) on the socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19 in 45 countries, produced by UN Women in partnership with national statistical offices, governmental entities, international partners, or private sector. The report confirmed uneven pandemic impacts for women on five key areas of concern: 1) participation in the workforce; 2) unpaid care and domestic work; 3) emotional and physical well-being; 4) access to goods and services; and 5) relief and social protection measures. The report also draws on the findings from the UNDP-UN Women Gender Response Tracker, which provides information on how countries are integrating gender equality in their policy responses. Country cases on how the RGA results have been used to inform critical gender-responsive policies and recovery plans to build back better are also provided in the report.

The COVID-19 Global Gender Response Tracker monitors responses taken by governments worldwide to tackle the pandemic, and highlights those that have integrated a gender lens. It captures two types of government responses: women’s participation in COVID-19 task forces and national policy measures taken by governments. It analyzes which of the policy measures address women’s economic and social security, including unpaid care work, the labour market and violence against women. The Tracker can provide guidance for policymakers and evidence for advocates to ensure a gender-sensitive COVID-19 policy response.

Violence against women (VAW) is a human rights violation, with often devastating immediate and long-term consequences. Women around the world experience it in various forms, settings, levels of frequency and severity, at the hands of intimate partners, family members or others. In addition, women’s feelings of insecurity restrict their lives in myriad ways, hampering their health, as well as their civil, political, economic and social rights. Women’s safety is the gateway to basic health, living standards and empowerment, and a necessary condition to achieve gender equality.

This brief summarizes the key findings of the assess[1]ment of the availability of data that could contribute to an understanding of the gendered impacts of COVID-19 and would be the basis for gender-responsive, evidence[1]based policy making in Uzbekistan. The assessment was conducted in December 2020 with the support of the UN Women Europe and Central Asia Regional Office in partnership with UNDP Uzbekistan. The focus of the assessment was on data and statistics compiled and disseminated by the State Committee of the Republic of Uzbekistan on Statistics (SSC) and on recent assessments and studies related to the impact of COVID-19 that have been conducted by different United Nations (UN) organi[1]zations and development partners.

The COVID-19 pandemic has put into sharp relief the importance of data to inform policy and programme responses to ensure that they are gender responsive. UN Women rose to the challenge and supported countries to collect data on the impacts of the pandemic to help inform national recovery plans. And despite the challenges of the pandemic, regular data production and other core components of the programme, along with other core work of the programme, continued. UN Women rolled out 52 Rapid Gender Assessment (RGA) surveys to capture the socioeconomic effects of the pandemic on women and girls. The surveys confirmed that women and men are experiencing the pandemic differently. The data have since been used to inform critical gender-responsive policies and recovery plans to build back better.

The importance of mainstreaming gender into social protection policies and programmes is increasingly recognized. However, evidence on the extent to which this is actually happening remains limited. This report contributes to filling this evidence gap by drawing on the findings of two complementary research projects undertaken by UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti and UN Women in 2019. Using a specifically developed analytical framework, these two projects reviewed 50 national social protection strategies and 40 social protection programmes across a total of 74 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to assess the extent to which they incorporate gender equality concerns.

In 2020, the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) and Women Enabled International (WEI), alongside the U.N Partnership for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and eight local and regional organisations working to advance rights for persons with disabilities, partnered to undertake a global study of the impact of COVID-19 on women and girls with disabilities, particularly as related to their sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and their right to be free from gender-based violence (GBV). Through virtual consultations with and written survey responses from over 300 women, girls, men, and gender non-conforming persons with disabilities, their advocates, and their support persons from around the world, we have learned that in almost all contexts—Global North and Global South, in places hit hard by CO V I D -19 and others with a much lower rate of infection—women and girls with disabilities have been left behind. They have struggled to meet their basic needs, to access needed health services including those needed both because of their gender and disability, and have faced disproportionate risks of violence.

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended national development plans and is likely to derail the planned trajectories of most countries towards achieving the 2030 Agenda. Not only has it had a significant impact on the health and mental wellbeing of millions of people globally, but it has also set off a global economic crisis. UN Women and UNFPA have compiled an assessment of the impact of COVID-19 on gender equality in the East and Southern Africa region. The aim of the report is to outline the opportunities and constraints for gender equality and women’s empowerment in the post-COVID-19 recovery phase and identify the key gaps and challenges in current policies and programmes in the East and Southern Africa region.

Globally, as more people are at home than ever, due to pandemic-related measures and lockdowns, the need for household chores and child care has multiplied. But who is shouldering these increased burdens, and by how much have they increased? To answer this question, UN Women has been gathering new and eye-opening data.

OVID-19 has affected Indonesian women and men differently. Although men are more likely to die from the pandemic, women’s mental health is taking a bigger toll. With school closures many women are now spending more time helping their children with schoolwork, and other forms of unpaid care and domestic work have also increased at home. As a result of the crisis, women’s paid work time and access to public transit have decreased, putting their livelihoods at stake. At a time when social distancing measures have rendered traditional data collection methods impossible, these effects are hard to capture. In response to this challenge, UN Women’s has partnered with Indosat Ooredoo to find innovative solutions to pursue data collection. These timely findings are important to inform response policies that meet the needs of women and men.

Families already living in poverty, many of whom are internally displaced persons or returnees, have little ability to weather a new crisis. They will be most under pressure to relieve financial crises through child labor or child marriage. In addition to dropping out of school, education disruption puts girls and young women at increased risk of numerous abuses: child marriage, exploitation, child labor, early pregnancy, and gender-based violence. An increase in reported cases of child marriage within the first few weeks/months of the pandemic has been documented.

This publication summarizes the data, research and policy work produced by UN Women on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women and girls, including how it is affecting extreme poverty, employment, health, unpaid care and violence against women and girls. The publication also brings into focus the paucity of gender data and calls for greater investment and prioritization of data on the gendered effects of the crisis.