Our Top Takeaways From the United Nations Policy Brief: The Impact of COVID-19 on Women

The DDP team has pulled together key findings from The United Nations Policy Brief: The Impact of COVID-19 on Women.

The brief was released on April 09, 2020 in an effort to outline the COVID-19 pandemic’s early effects on women in the workforce and in society, in general. According to the brief, “the pandemic is deepening pre-existing inequalities, exposing vulnerabilities in social, political and economic systems which are in turn amplifying the impacts of the pandemic.”

DDP’s Key Takeaways

The UN recommended that all policy makers prioritize the following points during the COVID-19 crisis.

Ensure women’s equal representation in all COVID-19 response planning and decision-making.

Drive transformative change for equality by addressing the care economy, paid and unpaid.  

Target women and girls in all efforts to address the socio-economic impact of COVID-19.

Introduction to the Study

The following introduction is featured on page 1 of the United Nations Policy Brief.

The year 2020, marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action, was intended to be ground-breaking for gender equality. Instead, with the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic even the limited gains made in the past decades are at risk of being rolled back. The pandemic is deepening pre-existing inequalities, exposing vulnerabilities in social, political and economic systems which are in turn amplifying the impacts of the pandemic.

Across every sphere, from health to the economy, security to social protection, the impacts of COVID-19 are exacerbated for women and girls simply by virtue of their sex:

  • Compounded economic impacts are felt especially by women and girls who are generally earning less, saving less, and holding insecure jobs or living close to poverty.
  • While early reports reveal more men are dying as a result of COVID-19, the health of women generally is adversely impacted through the reallocation of resources and priorities, including sexual and reproductive health services.
  • Unpaid care work has increased, with children out-of-school, heightened care needs of older persons and overwhelmed health services.
  • As the COVID-19 pandemic deepens economic and social stress coupled with restricted movement and social isolation measures, gender-based violence is increasing exponentially. Many women are being forced to ‘lockdown’ at home with their abusers at the same time that services to support survivors are being disrupted or made inaccessible.
  • All of these impacts are further amplified in contexts of fragility, conflict, and emergencies where social cohesion is already undermined and institutional capacity and services are limited.

This policy brief focuses on each of these issues in turn, exploring how women and girls’ lives are changing in the face of COVID19, and outlining suggested priority measures to accompany both the immediate response and longer-term recovery efforts.

COVID-19 is not only a challenge for global health systems, but also a test of our human spirit. Recovery must lead to a more equal world that is more resilient to future crises. Fiscal stimulus packages and emergency measures to address public health gaps have been put in place in many countries to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19.1 It is crucial that all national responses place women and girls – their inclusion, representation, rights, social and economic outcomes, equality and protection – at their centre if they are to have the necessary impacts.