Children and COVID-19 Research Library

This study examines whether the COVID-19 crisis affects women and men differently in terms of employment, working hours, and hourly wages, and whether the effects are demand or supply driven. COVID-19 impacts are studied using administrative data on all Dutch employees up to December 2020, focussing on the national lockdowns and emergency childcare for essential workers in the Netherlands. First, the impact of COVID-19 is much larger for non-essential workers than for essential workers. Although female non-essential workers are more affected than male non-essential workers, on average, women and men are equally affected, because more women than men are essential workers. Second, the impact for partnered essential workers with young children, both men and women, is not larger than for others. Third, single-parent essential workers respond with relatively large reductions in labour supply, suggesting emergency childcare was insufficient for them. Overall, labour demand effects appear larger than labour supply effects.

Most of the research on refugee economic participation has focused on adult refugee populations, particularly men. Data on adolescents and youth, particularly girls and young women, is limited. This report aims to fill some of these research gaps and contribute to efforts to support refugee youth to realise their potential in line with the commitments enshrined in both the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to ‘leave no one behind’, and in the Global Compact on Refugees, to ‘enhance refugee self-reliance’. Focusing on male and female youth aged 15–24 years from Syrian and Palestinian refugee communities in Jordan, as well as vulnerable Jordanians in host communities, the report captures their aspirations and experiences in building independent and sustainable livelihoods. It incorporates a gender lens to identify and analyse the factors that promote or hinder youth participation in the labour market, paying particular attention to gender norms and roles.

Echoing global trends, where the absolute number of displaced persons continues to grow in tandem with the proportion of people living in protracted displacement, the vast majority of both Syrian and Palestinian refugee communities in Lebanon have been there for 10 years or longer. So, how can decision-makers lay the foundations for gender-responsive education systems and economic empowerment for refugee youth in Lebanon? The collapse of Lebanon’s GDP by 58% during recent years has resulted not only in an explosion of demand for humanitarian assistance, but also created growing concerns about meeting SDG targets. Questions arise over how best to support adolescents and young people to transition into adulthood in the midst of such intertwined, and escalating, crises. This ODI Report began with an extensive review of secondary data, and uses primary qualitative data collected from Syrian and Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon over the first half of 2021. Our research aims to identify programming proposals and recommended actions for donor and policy-makers to facilitate the economic and educational success for all young refugees living permanently outside their country's borders.

Although gender stereotypes regarding paid work and unpaid work are changing, most wives are responsible for taking care of the family and home in Japan. It is unclear how time spent on housework and childcare has changed between working men and women during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan. The purpose of this study is to investigate how working men and women’s responsibilities for housework and childcare changed during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan depending on work hours, job type, the number of employees in the workplace, and frequency of telecommuting. A cross-sectional analysis (N = 14,454) was conducted using data from an Internet monitoring study (CORoNa Work Project), which was conducted in December 2020. A multilevel logistic model with nested prefectures of residence was conducted to estimate the odds ratio (OR) for change in time devoted to housework and childcare among men and women adjusting for age, household income, presence of spouse who work, work hours, job type, the number of employees in the workplace, frequency of telecommuting, and the incidence rate of COVID-19 by prefecture.

The present work investigates how the increased domestic responsibilities created by the Spring 2020 lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic in Norway and gender ideologies relate to the well-being of mothers with elementary school children. In June 2020, a cross-sectional online study including current and retrospective measures with 180 mothers (Mage = 39.96 years, SD = 6.11) of elementary school children across Norway was conducted. First, in line with earlier research on the strain of the pandemic on parents, and especially mothers, this study found that Norwegian mothers’ well-being during the lockdown significantly declined compared to before the lockdown (both measured retrospectively). Furthermore, mothers’ well-being after the Spring 2020 lockdown did not immediately return to pre-lockdown levels. Finally, it predicted that gender ideologies (i.e., essentialist beliefs about parenthood) would exacerbate the negative impact of increased domestic responsibilities (i.e., childcare and housework) on mothers’ well-being (i.e., higher standard-higher stress hypothesis).

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected family life, increasing parental stress around health, job losses, reduced salaries, and maintaining domestic life in lockdown and social isolation. The transition to home-schooling and remote work with school and workplace closures caused additional stressors as families began living, working, and educating in one place. This research aims to understand the relationship between the pandemic and parental stress, focusing on family well-being and established characteristics of the family unit that may cause some family members to experience the adverse consequences of the pandemic in more or less profound ways, especially mothers. Previous research shows that mothers carry more family responsibilities than fathers and can experience higher stress levels. This study employed a quantitative cross-sectional online survey to extend our understanding of the interaction between home-schooling, work and home life, and stress levels in a group of 364 parents. In total, 232 mothers and 132 fathers completed the survey.

Adolescent (cisgender) sexual minority males (ASMM) face multiple mental health disparities. Yet surprisingly little is known about use of mental health care among ASMM. The current study examined mental health care use among ASMM, both lifetime use and during the COVID-19 pandemic. ASMM (N = 154, ages 14–17 years) enrolled in Spring 2020 for a pilot randomized controlled trial of an online sexual health intervention. Participants were assessed at baseline and 3-month follow-up.

A literature review was conducted to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on documented preexisting determinants of adolescent pregnancy in sub-Saharan Africa such as poverty, inequitable gender norms, low access to education, and reproductive health services. The terms “sub-Saharan Africa,” “Gender Norms,” “Poverty,” and “Adolescent Pregnancy” were used to search the literature for preexisting determinants of adolescent pregnancy in academic and grey literature. “COVID-19” was added to investigate the potential consequences of the pandemic. The literature revealed similar experiences in adolescent girls during the Ebola outbreak, which lead to the analysis of government and healthcare official responses to previous epidemics.

The process of data analysis provides, undoubtedly, some of the major challenges facing organizations during the implementation of interventions in emergencies. The challenges are primarily due to the lack of direct access to beneficiaries and the rapidly evolving nature of emergencies. This paper outlines how Plan International’s Making Ghanaian Girls Great! (MGCubed) project used phone-based surveys to assess the uptake of a Ghana Learning TV (GLTV) programme implemented in partnership with the government. Due to the emergency context and the need for real-time information to guide the implementation of this intervention, there was little time to undertake a major statistical analysis of survey data. This paper discusses how the MGCubed project adopted a simple data disaggregation method using a logic tree technique to gain valuable insights from the survey data. The method allowed for exploring the insights of the data set in real-time without requiring more complex and time-consuming analysis.

This paper presents research on girls’ and boys’ gendered perceptions of their learning during school closures due to COVID-19. The research was conducted in ten countries affected by displacement across Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. It applied statistical analysis using multivariate logistic regression models from the results of a survey conducted with parents or caregivers and their children. It complemented the quantitative study with qualitative methodology, which provided a nuanced understanding of girls’ and boys’ perceptions of their learning and their voiced concerns during the COVID-19-related school closures.

As of 2021, more than 80 million people worldwide have been displaced by war, violence, and poverty. An estimated 30 to 34 million of these are under age 18, and many are at risk of interrupting their education permanently—a situation aggravated in recent years by the global COVID-19 pandemic. This article adopts an intersectional conceptual framework to explore the roles gender and other social inequalities have played in shaping adolescents’ access to education during the COVID-19 pandemic. It examines two refugee populations: the Rohingya, who have been excluded from formal education opportunities in Bangladesh, and Syrian refugees in Jordan, who have access to formal education in their host country. It provides novel empirical data, as well as insights into the adolescent refugee experience and the short-term consequences for education resulting from the pandemic. The article draws from quantitative survey data on 3,030 adolescents, and from in-depth qualitative interviews conducted in the spring of 2020 with a subset of 91 adolescents who are part of an ongoing longitudinal study. A 40 key informant interviews with community leaders and service providers was also conducted.

This year’s State of the World’s Girls report, The Truth Gap, explores how adolescent girls and young women deal with misinformation and disinformation when engaging with political, civic or social topics online. 26,000 girls and young women from 26 countries were interviewed and alarming findings, including that 9 out of 10 have been harmed by false information and lies online were discovered.

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.