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The forecasts were very negative for women from the beginning of the pandemic.
The measures adopted to stop COVID-19 were going to cause a setback in the already slow path towards gender equality.
NGOs and UN agencies began to warn that the lockdowns would increase domestic violence, that limited movement and the collapse of health would make it difficult to access sexual and reproductive health services, with millions of unwanted pregnancies as a result, and less likely to interrupt them.
This, in addition to the socioeconomic impact of the loss of their precarious and informal jobs that they mostly occupy, and the added overload of unpaid tasks.
Time has only confirmed the fears, the organizations on the ground attest to this, but the scale of the impact is unknown in the absence of reliable studies and statistics.
More information
Covid-19 is bad for women's rights
Inequality pandemic
The unwanted 'baby boom' caused by the pandemic
The Center for Global Development (CGD) has created, with the financial support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a special team to investigate the specific damage that the pandemic has caused to women in the countries of middle and low income.
They will also analyze recovery measures with a gender perspective.
“We want to ensure that gender equality is a priority in the COVID response and later in recovery efforts.
But it is important that decisions are based on reliable data ”, explains Megan O'Donnell, deputy director of gender at CGD and who will lead the new initiative.
Only with what is already known, says the expert, would be enough to determine that the programs of food aid, monetary, training and access to technology should prioritize women;
But only with incontestable evidence and statistics will leaders convert their speech into concrete policies.
“I think there is a lot of talk, but not the funds;
the rulers, the UN leaders, the presidents say the right thing, but when you look at the dollar data… They don't show that gender issues are prioritized ”.
Only with what is already known would be enough to determine that the programs of food aid, monetary, training and access to technology should prioritize women
The areas in which the CGD's research will focus are five, O'Donnell details: health, social protection services, the economic and purchasing power of women, gender violence and female leadership.
“The first and foremost thing is to get a solid baseline of understanding of what is happening and what is not.
And be very clear about what data we have on the impact of the covid, disaggregated by gender, and see how governments and donor entities are responding, "he summarizes.
To do this, they will gather the results of national studies of institutions that work on these issues, many of them also funded by the Gates Foundation.
"The idea is that we elevate it, we amplify the analysis that they are doing in each country, we unite it with the work that is done in others - India, Colombia, Mongolia or Vietnam - and we obtain a global photograph of what is happening."
The goal is to reveal what the problems are and what is being done accordingly.
"But we will also have to highlight the lack of data, which we do not know, especially in low-income countries where it is more difficult to have it," O'Donnell notes.
Regarding the impact of the pandemic on women's health, they will study the indirect impacts on it.
"Not who is becoming infected with covid and dying from this virus, but what disruptions there have been, especially in sexual and reproductive health services."
According to estimates by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) at the end of April 2020, 47 million women would no longer have access to family planning methods and there would be seven million unintended pregnancies in the first six months of the pandemic in 114 low and middle income countries.
A quarter later, in Mosul, Iraq, the Médecins Sans Frontières hospital staff cared for a “much higher than usual” number of pregnant women who came to give birth after one of the main public hospitals was fully dedicated to the attention of cases of covid-19.
The NGO project in Choloma, Honduras also saw a "sharp increase" in patients as public hospitals in the city, the third in the country, became centers entirely dedicated to the pandemic.
The average monthly births at the MSF clinic went from 55 to 75, even in a context of total confinement and paralysis of transport, according to data from the organization for July.
The diversion of health resources - human and material - to the care of covid-19 is one of the many decisions that have affected the sexual and reproductive health of women.
Confinements and movement restrictions made it even more difficult to access contraceptives and services that, despite the recommendations of the World Health Organization, many countries did not consider a priority or essential.
“In Rustenburg, South Africa, health structures initially suspended voluntary termination services due to a misperception that they do not constitute essential medical care,” describes MSF, which takes credit for the authorities changing to seem.
Unsafe abortion is one of the main causes of maternal mortality worldwide: every year at least 22,800 women and girls die, and millions are seriously injured, they recall from the NGO.
The CGD team intends to put numbers on all these experiences.
In the area of social protection, they want to know who is benefiting from cash transfer programs, food aid and public programs.
When it comes to economic power, women are being disproportionately hit in terms of job loss, purchasing power, and as entrepreneurs, they have been forced to close their businesses, in addition to taking on a greater burden of unpaid care work than the men.
In rich countries like the United States, the dimension of many of these statements is known.
Thus, it is known that in April - one of the hardest months of the health crisis - 55% of the 20.5 million jobs lost in a very flexible labor market, such as the United States, corresponded to women.
The calculation of this reality in the poorest nations remains to be done, O'Donnell points out.
All the evidence we have indicates that girls and women in the poorest countries are going to be abandoned and left further behind than they were.
Megan O'Donnel, Center for Global Development
“Now there is a restart opportunity.
And we have to do it because all the evidence we have points to the fact that girls and women in the poorest countries are going to be abandoned and left even further behind than they were, and they are going to face greater barriers to their physical safety, to earn a living. sustenance and stay healthy and educated ”.
O'Donnell insists that his main goal is to prevent this from happening.
The CGD expert is partially optimistic.
“If in the global community we take this moment very seriously and ask ourselves what we have here, which is not just a health crisis, but one that has exacerbated pre-existing gender inequalities, I believe that we are facing an opportunity to prioritize the groups that were being abandoned even before all this ”.
In O'Donnell's view, there have been "some positive signs" that this time, leaders will not forget about women as they emerge from the crisis.
“The UN Secretary General himself was among the first to warn that there was a shadow pandemic: gender violence;
and he tried to mobilize the countries to realize this problem.
I think leaders are aware of this issue, ”he notes.
According to the report
Women and children in times of covid
, from We World, violence against women increased by 25% during lockdowns.
The recognition of this problem by the leaders was not always accompanied by measures to strengthen the services for the victims, says MSF.
In South Africa, for example, calls to report cases of sexual violence on the telephone enabled for this increased threefold after the quarantine took effect.
“However, although there was an increase in reports, we have seen a decrease in visits to the clinic,” emphasizes Kgaladi Mphahlele, head of family planning activities at MSF in Rustenburg, a platinum-belt mining city with a large migrant community.
Throughout the city and its surroundings, other clinics have reported a decrease in attendance data in the same direction, the NGO details.
O'Donnell further notes that while gender-based violence has at least received attention at the highest level, it has not been so with the part of the economic impact of the pandemic on women.
"They suffer more from informality, they have lost their jobs to a greater extent, they have had to return to subsistence agriculture," he lists.
But the lack of studies and statistics causes the leaders to ignore and ignore the problem.
"We need to have that data and amplify it," he stresses.
"It has been repeated that this is an opportunity to rebuild better, but we have to be very specific about what that means and who is going to benefit."
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