Children and COVID-19 Research Library

This Rapid Gender Analysis (RGA) builds on the secondary data analysis done in May 2020 by the Gender Hub, UN Women, CARE and OXFAM. This RGA aims to answer the following research questions: 1) How has COVID-19 impacted women, girls, men and boys and key vulnerable and marginalised groups’ ability to meet their basic needs and entitlements? 2) What achievements made on gender equality and the empowerment of women, girls and LGBTQ groups are now at risk of being undone by COVID-19? 3) What new or heightened protection and safety risks are arising from COVID-19? 4) How can women, girls, men and boys, and key vulnerable and marginalised groups participate and lead in the COVID-19 response?

2020 was supposed to be a once-in-a-generation opportunity for women and girls. The year when governments, businesses, organisations and individuals who believe in equal treatment for all people were going to develop a five-year plan for how to work together to accelerate progress for gender equality, in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. Then COVID-19 struck. Now, 2020 risks being a year of irreversible setbacks and lost progress for girls. Unless the world acts fast and decisively, the impact on girls’ futures – and on all our futures – will be devastating.

As COVID-19 has spread rapidly across the globe, governments have implemented measures to contain the spread of the pandemic, including school closures, home isolation/quarantine and community lockdowns. These measures have exacerbated gender inequalities, impacting the lives of children and households. This research highlights gendered differences in several areas related to children and COVID-19, with an emphasis on how gender inequalities intersect with disability and displacement status. Recommendations are based on Save the Children’s COVID-19 research, lessons from ongoing programming, and existing studies.

This study shows that societal gender ideology likely has affected school closure and opening policies. Societies that are more supportive of maternal employment have reopened schools significantly sooner than societies less supportive of maternal employment, relative to other opening measures and net of infection rates. The study contributes novel evidence on the role of attitudes on policy-decision making, and unveils the presence of a potential gender ideology bias in policy-makers’ ad-hoc decision-making under time pressure. The epidemic threat remains high and questions about the operation of schools continue to be a pressing matter. Considering this bias in decision-making can improve further policy-measures during the remainder of the pandemic, and beyond.

Governments’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have had devastating effects on women and girls. Gender-Based Violence is a problem of human-rights, public health and development. It is also a problem that has had devastating effects for women and girls during the COVID-19 pandemic. This real-time emergent learning brief has been prepared for UNICEF Country Offices and Practitioners as they respond to gender-based violence during the pandemic. Drawing on evidence from UNICEF country experiences, the brief identifies emerging risks related to gender-based violence; highlights programme responses and adaptations; and outlines key points for programming, advocacy and systems change.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a global emergency of multiple dimensions. There is now major concern that COVID-19 and its impact will push back fragile progress on gender equality, including slowing progress in reversing discriminatory laws, the enactment of new laws, the implementation of existing legislation and broader progress needed to achieving justice for all. This rapid assessment examines how the impacts of COVID-19 are threatening women’s ability to access justice. It examines the impacts of COVID-19, policy responses as well as outlines policy recommendations for the period ahead. Using a gender lens, the report documents major threats to women’s lives and livelihoods associated with COVID-19 – namely, curtailed access to justice institutions, rising intimate partner violence (IPV), threats to women’s rights to sexual and reproductive health, growing injustice for workers, discriminatory laws and lack of legal identity, as well as repercussions on forcibly displaced women and those deprived of their liberty.

Addressing COVID-19 is foremost a public health concern. However, the impact of the crisis as well as the legal and policy responses developed by states to counter the spread of COVID-19 have much wider ramifications that affect a broad range of human rights, including the ability of people to access justice in a timely, fair, and effective manner. The crisis also presents specific justice ‘needs’, such as addressing the rise in gender based violence and making additional institutional reforms to strengthen the effectiveness of the justice chain in a radically shifted social context. A key concern is that the economic fallout of the crisis will put many groups in society further behind, including children, women, older persons, persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) persons, displaced populations, stateless people, migrants, asylum seekers, victims of human trafficking, day labourers, and people living at or below the poverty line.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated economic crisis are posing huge challenges, raising many unknowns and imposing wrenching trade-offs. Both crises are global, but their impacts are deeply local. The policy response to both crises needs to be rapid, even if it is rough around the edges. But countries cannot pull this off on their own—the global crises require global solidarity and coordination.