Gender norms and the coronavirus

This multi-blog by experts from ODI looks at gender and Covid-19 in relation to leadership, violence, economic empowerment, education, health, social protection, youth, data and humanitarian contexts.

Published by: ODI

Read and contribute to this shared document, complied by the new global working group on gender and the Coronavirus, which includes links to resources and articles.

Published by: Covid-19 and gender working group

A collection of research, studies and other references on Mendeley covering the sex and gender dimensions of the Covid-19 pandemic, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.

Published by: Covid-19 and gender working group

This Google doc details gender responsive Covid-19 policies and Practices

Published by: Covid-19 and gender working group

The Covid-19 gender matrix provides a rapid snapshot of the gendered impacts of the outbreak in each country.

Published by: Covid-19 and gender working group

This article looks at concerns 50 years of progress on gender equality in the UK could be put into reverse unless government intervenes.

Published by: The Guardian

Women Respond is a new initiative to unpack the needs and realities of women and girls with whom CARE works around the world – many of whom are first responders in their communities. These voices are critical to strengthen how organisations, governments and donors should act to support those most impacted by the pandemic.

Published by: US AID - Learning Lab

This multi-blog by experts from ODI looks at gender and Covid-19 in relation to leadership, violence, economic empowerment, education, health, social protection, youth, data and humanitarian contexts.

Published by: ODI

This article explores the warning coming from campaign groups that women across Europe risk being pushed back into traditional roles.

Published by: The Guardian

This article describes the serious plight of India’s domestic workers, laid off with no resources and often little family support, during the Covid-19 lockdown.

Published by: News 18 - India

This article discusses potential post-pandemic positive changes in domestic labour. There are suggestions that gender equity might be one of the winners from this crisis but there are also suggestions of the opposite – that existing inequalities between genders will be reinforced by the privations of the Coronavirus crisis, and women will be the bigger losers from the economic fallout.

Published by: The Sydney Morning Herald

The likelihood is though that despite both parents now being at home, much of the “domestic” work will still land squarely on the shoulders of the women of the house. Like the 1950s housewife, women will be expected to make exciting meals, keep the house clean and tidy and the children entertained – but she’ll also have to do all this while working from home.

Published by: The Conversation

This article reflects on the disproportionate impact on women’s domestic labour as well as the pre-conditions that allowed it to deepen inequalities (through unequal pay, women's increased domestic care burden, job insecurity etc.). It also laments how gender issues have been so underexplored or unacknowledged in previous health crises, e.g. in Sierra Leone more women died of obstetric complications between 2013-16 than Ebola, but the deaths were simply taken for granted.

Published by: The Atlantic

Reflecting a view from many northern countries, this article on Covid-19 in the USA describes the gender norms which assume women will take on the domestic roles, even whilst managing paid work schedules. Given the USA’s poor social protection (as a high-income country) the article highlights the inadequacies of individual responses in a pandemic. Government enacted policy solutions are urgently needed to women caregivers such as paid family leave, paid sick leave and other family-focused social programmes.

Published by: The Guardian

This article outlines the constraints rural indigenous children, particularly girls, face in accessing learning through Mexico’s Aprende en la Casa (Learn at Home) programme.

Published by: Brookings

This post summarises the potentially gender-differentiated effects of Covid-19 on young people’s educational opportunities and outcomes. It also flags a survey seeking responses from front-line service providers on the specific risks to girls of school closures.

Published by: Centre for Global Development

This article shows how one of the most commonly adopted and recommended ways of continuing education during periods of school closure is skewed in favour of better off groups, with gender inequalities in some contexts.

Published by: UKFIET

This much-cited paper on the effects of a life skills and livelihoods programme for girls and young women in Ebola-affected Sierra Leone highlights its role in maintaining education and a range of socially protective effects on younger girls.

Published by: World Bank

This report by Plan International shares the voices of girls affected by Covid-19 and highlights lessons from previous emergencies and humanitarian crisis that can be useful at implementing better programming and responding. The report touches on the effects that harmful gender norms have on girls during previous emergencies such as increases in child marriage and unintended pregnancies or their tightened exposure to the virus due to their traditional roles as caregivers, reducing their ability to continue attending school. The report calls to action on important areas in the lives of adolescent girls such as education, economic support, child protection and GBV and sexual and reproductive health rights.

Published by: Plan International

This report explores the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on forced migrant survivors of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) and the organisations which support them across five countries: the UK, Turkey, Tunisia, Sweden and Australia. The reports highlights that this group already experienced vulnerabilities and precarity pre-Covid-19 due to their gender, care responsibilities and insecure immigration status, increasing their vulnerability to abuse and exploitation. The report offers the immediate recommendations during social distancing measures to governments, service providers and funders to protect the interests of forced migrants survivors.

Published by: University of Birmingham

This briefing note provides concrete actions and strategies from a gender norms perspective that UNDP, UN agencies and development partners can take to prevent and address GBV in the context of COVID-19. The brief begins by stressing that pre-existing toxic social norms and gender inequalities (accompanied by economic and social stress caused by the pandemic, coupled with restricted movement and social isolation measures) have led to an exponential increase in GBV. It calls for concrete actions to mainstream GBV prevention in non-GBV interventions, highlighting that all COVID-19 interventions must ensure that they do not reinforce or reproduce the existing power imbalances and patriarchal norms which not only underpin GBV but reproduces it.

Published by: UNDP

This blog looks at the plight of Syrian refugee women in Lebanon and Jordan. Now living with the additional strain the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown measures have caused, the blog describes the increase of domestic violence and decrease in opportunities for women to work.

Published by: The New Humanitarian

This news reveals the ways that lockdowns and movement restrictions affect violence against transgender people in different cities in Latin America such as in Bogota, Colombia, where women can only go out on days with even-numbered dates and men on odd, while transgender people are allowed to choose. However, violence against transgender people has been taking place such as stabs, intimidation or enquiries at public places by police officers who question their gender identify.

Published by: Reuters

David Moinina Sengeh, Sierra Leone's education minister, shares a photo of himself with his 10-month-old daughter on his back as he cares for her whilst on a lockdown conference call. The minister chose to share the photo as an example for other men and to challenge gender norms.

Published by: The BBC

In this commentary, the authors point out that there are important gender determinants to both men’s and women’s vulnerabilities to Covid-19, and call on the global health community to unpack and address these early in the Covid-19 pandemic response. They point to best practices and tools from two decades of engaging men in research and programming in the sexual and reproductive health field.

Published by: Global Public Health Journal

This article outlines some of the ways that masculinities have been changing among some social groups and reinforced among others during the Covid-19 crisis in Uganda.

Published by: School of Women and Gender Studies, Makerere University (Kampala, Uganda)

The Men Engage Alliance has compiled useful resources on digital activism for equitable, compassionate and non-violent ways of being men during the Covid-19 pandemic. The collection includes materials in English and Spanish from Men Engage Africa, Latin America and South Asia among others.

Published by: The Men Engage Alliance

This LSE blog provides data from surveys of male and female perceptions of the danger of Covid-19 and explains differences in terms of masculine attitudes and behaviours, which may make men more vulnerable.

Published by: London School of Economics and Political Science

A useful article explaining how Covid-19 is experienced by men whose cultures reinforce macho stereotypes. This includes men’s physical and emotional vulnerabilities, social isolation and male led pandemic responses.

Published by: The Conversation

This briefing discusses the mental health effects of financial inequalities in the context of Covid-19. Drawing on evidence from “Coronavirus: Mental Health in the Pandemic” research – a UK-wide, long-term study - it concludes Covid-19 is putting a huge strain on people’s mental wellbeing and that the burden of mental distress is borne disproportionately by those with less economic security. In some cases, these are people facing considerable existing challenges, such as mental health problems surviving in a destructive cycle of poverty and mental distress, or those facing structural inequalities due to belonging to an ethnic minority group.

Published by: Mental Health Foundation

This piece notes that women are experiencing the emotional brunt of Covid-19, experiencing more anxiety than men with some evidence also showing that women’s employment is more likely to be impacted. Women are also more likely to be front line health staff, caring for children and older relatives and also more at risk of self-isolating with an abusive partner. All of which equates with them facing increase stress and anxieties compared to men.

Published by: The Guardian

Focused on humanitarian contexts, this piece highlight the multiple factors that can cause mental ill-health in such contexts, noting also that appropriate responses are often neglected. The COVID-19 crisis will exacerbate the need for such mental health responses. It concludes on a positive note by suggesting that this crisis could also be an opportunity to invest in and find ways to prioritize long neglected essential interventions and learn from them, in this case mental health ones.

Published by: Devex

This blog makes a plea to include how social realities also need to be taken into account when addressing the mental health effects of Covid-19. In particularly, the author highlights the need to address social and economic conditions as well as inequalities and poverty that contribute to poor mental health.

Published by: Nature Research Journal

This position paper calls for multidisciplinary mental health research related to Covid-19 including its psychological, social, and neuroscientific effects, drawing also on the expertise of people with lived experiences. It discusses priorities based on a rapid survey done in the UK (which is differentiated by age and gender) and informed by an expert panel and suggests there is urgent need to address the mental health consequences for vulnerable groups.

Published by: The Lancet

This article looks at the impact of school closures on young people with mental health needs. School closures mean a lack of access to the resources they usually have through schools and in a UK survey, by the mental health charity YoungMinds, 83% said the pandemic had made their conditions worse.

Published by: The Lancet

Four months into the Covid-19 pandemic, there is a growing awareness for norm collisions between the right to life and well-being associated with the virus on the one hand and a broad array of other norms. This blog discusses the politics surrounding COVID-19 as being, fundamentally, about difficult decisions on hierarchies between norms in cases where they collide.

Published by: Duck of Minerva

This article looks at research suggesting female leaders are managing their country's response to COVID-19 more successfully than their male counterparts and what attributes may be causing the difference.

Published by: The Guardian

This high level convening brought together women leaders to discuss how to 'put women at the centre of decision-making' in the Covid-19 response. The meeting notes here lay out some of the critical areas of concern for women leaders, and begins to lay out some thinking on what efforts across sectors can be doing to better situate women's rights and needs more directly in the agendas of the response effort.

Published by: OECD

As Covid-19 continues to touch every country, it is clear the amplification of women’s voices is a global concern. But recognising the urgency of inclusion is just one step. How can we ensure transformative social changes that will enhance women’s representation, in real time, when crisis hits?

Published by: Think Global Health

This blog looks at UN Resolution 1325 which recognises how women and girls are deferentially impacted by conflict and war and the critical role women can and already do play in peace building efforts. As the world deals with the Coronavirus pandemic, this resolution matters - possibly more than ever, including for the private sector, this blog explains why.

Published by: Forbes

As COVID-19 exposes gaps in the world's pandemic response infrastructure — and challenges our collective social, political, and economic systems — we are faced with an opportunity to tackle the defining issue undermining global health infrastructure: inequality.

Published by: Devex

School closures, massive rates of job loss and furloughing, and a shift to working from home are all affecting how parents spend their time, and how mothers and fathers divide responsibilities for paid work, housework and childcare. But the divide is not even. This new survey data captured how 3,500 families with two opposite-gender parents are sharing paid work and domestic responsibilities.

Published by: Institute for Fiscal Studies

New research reveals the gendered impacts of Covid-19 on livelihoods in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.

Published by: Cenfri

This briefing examines the economic implications of Covid-19 for women and girls, and concludes with recommendations for a gender-sensitive response.

Published by: CARE

This article highlights the impacts of lockdown on a stigmatised social group – sex workers – and their exclusion from social protection initiatives.

Published by: The Guardian

This article highlights the effects of Covid-19 on informal sector workers, with a particular focus on the agricultural workforce. It highlights some of the specific gendered effects as well as the ways in which intersecting inequalities put different groups at risk of losing livelihoods and extreme poverty.

Published by: FAO