Children and COVID-19 Research Library

This working paper explores the meanings and experiences of resilience, and its gender dimensions, among a cohort of Ethiopian children exposed to poverty and adversity across the early life course. It asks why some girls and some boys seem to fare well as they transition to adulthood, despite the challenges and obstacles they had faced, while others do less well. The data comprise repeat life history interviews (from ages 12 to 24) and survey questionnaires over a 20-year period (to age 25). Qualitative analysis (n=64) revealed how children’s lives did not follow linear paths, and were easily derailed by unplanned events and shocks, including: (a) climatic shocks; (b) societal influences; (c) school transitions and relations; (d) household changes; and (e) child health and social development. Gender mediated children’s experiences of risk and their individual and family coping mechanisms.

This policy brief draws on a qualitative study that uses a gender perspective to investigate the notion of resilience among a cohort of young women and young men who grew up in poverty in five rural and urban communities in Ethiopia, and who are part of the broader Young Lives longitudinal study of 3000 children and young people in the country.  It asks why some children seem to fare well as they transistion to adulthood, despite the challenges and obstacles they had faced, whilst others do less well.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused the largest disruption of education in history. Throughout 2020 most governments around the world temporarily closed schools and other learning spaces in an attempt to contain the spread of the virus. At the peak of the pandemic in April 2020, schooling was disrupted for over 1.5 billion learners in more than 190 countries. This unprecedented disruption to education has the potential to roll back substantial gains made on girls’ education inrecent decades, with broader immediate and longer-term effects on the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, including those related to poverty reduction, health and well-being, inclusive quality education and gender equality.

This report aims to support timely and context-relevant policy and programming in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, the State of Palestine (Gaza and West Bank) and Jordan by adding to the evidence base on adolescent girls’ and boys’ experiences during COVID-19. Drawing on mixed methods research it captures the risks and opportunities adolescents face across four low- and middle-income country contexts six to nine months after lockdowns in response to the pandemic were first introduced. With a focus on the intersectional challenges faced by adolescents including by gender, age, marital status, disability and context, the report covers three key domains: education and learning; violence and bodily integrity; and voice, agency and community participation. This is the companion report to a report published in August 2020, ‘I have nothing to feed my family’, which focused on the immediate, short-term effects of COVID-19 and associated lockdowns on girls and boys across the same contexts. The report concludes with key recommendations for policy and programming actors so that efforts to ‘build back better’ post-pandemic can be more effectively informed by adolescents’ experiences and voices.

This report analyses how girls’ and young women’s capacity and agency for entrepreneurship and leadership are shaped by their household, community, and wider ecosystem as they move from adolescence into adulthood. The research aims to strengthen the evidence-base to support the advancement of gender equality and tackle gender-related barriers that adolescent girls and young women face in Asia-Pacific, focusing on Indonesia, Thailand and Laos. Taking a human-centered approach, the report aims to understand how girls’ and young women’s opportunities, capacity and agency for empowerment through entrepreneurial skill development is shaped as they move from adolescents to adulthood.

The United Nations Leave No One Behind, A Call-to-Action pledges and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are the formulating structure of this article. The commitments are documents to offer structure on how to eliminate poverty for all global citizens. The article aims to highlight where our urban areas and cities across the globe need improvement by eradicating discriminatory practices that affect women and trickle down to childcare and education of their children to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) the year 2030, amidst COVID-19.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the United Nations Global Strategy (2016–30) emphasize that all women, children and adolescents ‘survive, thrive and transform’. A key element of this global policy framework is that gender equality is a stand-alone goal as well as a cross-cutting priority. Gender inequality and intersecting social and structural determinants shape health systems, including the content of policy documents, with implications for implementation. This article applies a gender lens to policy documents by national government bodies that have mandates on adolescent health in South Africa. Data were 15 policy documents, authored between 2003 and 2018, by multiple actors. The content analysis was guided by key lines of enquiry, and policy documents were classified along the continuum of gender blind to gender transformative.

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended in-person public education across the United States, a critical infrastructure of care that parents—especially mothers—depend on to work. To understand the nature and magnitude of school closures across states, this study collected detailed primary data—the Elementary School Operating Status database (ESOS)—to measure the percentage of school districts offering in-person, remote, and hybrid instruction models for elementary schools by state in September 2020. These data have been linked to the Current Population Survey to evaluate the association between school reopening and parents’ labor force participation rates, comparing 2020 labor force participation rates to those observed prepandemic in 2019.

This study examines how the shift to remote work altered responsibilities for domestic labor among partnered couples and single parents. The study draws on data from a nationally representative survey of 2,200 US adults, including 478 partnered parents and 151 single parents, in April 2020. The closing of schools and child care centers significantly increased demands on working parents in the United States, and in many circumstances reinforced an unequal domestic division of labor.

Economic and social disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic have important implications for gender and class inequality. Drawing on Statistics Canada’s monthly Labour Force Survey, this study documents trends in gender gaps in employment and work hours over the pandemic (February–October 2020). These findings highlight the importance of care provisions for gender equity, with gaps larger among parents than people without children, and most pronounced when care and employment were more difficult to reconcile.

The COVID-19 pandemic has magnified families’ struggles to reconcile caregiving and employment, especially for working mothers. How have different countries reacted to these troubling circumstances? What policies have been implemented to alleviate the pernicious effects of the pandemic on gender and labor inequalities? This research examined the policies offered in Denmark, Germany, and the United States, three countries that represent distinct welfare regimes. It found important differences among the policy solutions provided, but also in the “cultural infrastructures” that allow policies to work as intended, or not.

A policy brief for UN Women on the impact of COVID‐19 on women has noted that, across the board, the impacts of COVID‐19 are exacerbated for women and girls. The health of women in general has been adversely affected, with resources being reallocated in the emergency response to COVID‐19 and frequently leading to the suspension or limitation of reproductive, maternal, neonatal, and child health (RMNCH) services. The UN Women brief also paints a stark picture in terms of gender‐based violence, noting that as the pandemic deepens both social and economic stress, coupled with restricted movement and social isolation measures, many women have been forced to isolate with their abusers, a situation which has coincided with disruption or lack of access to the support services which they so desperately need. The UNFPA have predicted that the pandemic is also likely to cause significant delays to programs dedicated to preventing child marriage and female genital mutilation; the estimated projections are stark, with over 2 million more cases of FGM and 13 million more child marriages over the next 10 years than would otherwise have occurred. As the official journal of the International Federation for Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO), IJGO is a major source for global cutting‐edge research and reports on issues affecting women's health, as well as addressing economic, social, and human rights issues.

This report is the result of a multi-sectoral needs assessment exercise focusing on the rights and needs of adolescents living in the Anglophone territories of North West South West (NWSW) Cameroon. Conducted under extremely challenging circumstances, the assessment used innovative methods pioneered by Plan International to capture the voices of adolescent girls and young women, alongside adolescent boys, young men and their parents and caregivers. It spoke directly to adolescent girls themselves, in particular adolescent girls who are mothers, pregnant, or married, whose ideas, and needs, are often ignored. The NWSW regions of Cameroon have been engulfed in crisis since late 2016, yet this conflict, and its impacts on adolescents, have received limited attention from the international community. This report, which gives adolescents the space to voice their concerns and priorities can be used to engage with states, donors and other humanitarian actors on this neglected crisis and highlight what needs to be done to address adolescents’ needs, rights and aspirations.

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended in-person public education across the United States, a critical infrastructure of care that parents—especially mothers—depend on to work. To understand the nature and magnitude of school closures across states, this study collected detailed primary data—the Elementary School Operating Status database (ESOS)—to measure the percentage of school districts offering in-person, remote, and hybrid instruction models for elementary schools by state in September 2020.