How Women Deliver is Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic
We know that disease outbreak affects women and men differently and that pandemics exacerbate gender inequalities for girls and women. That’s why Women Deliver continues to put a gender lens on all aspects of the response to COVID-19, ensuring the unique needs of girls and women are addressed, and their unique expertise is leveraged.
Since the first emergence of COVID-19 in 2020, we still see that girls and women, in all their intersecting identities, are playing an outsized role responding to the pandemic, including as frontline healthcare workers, caregivers at home, and mobilizers in their communities. As the crisis continues around the world, it is clear that if we truly want to deliver health, wellbeing, and dignity for all, girls and women, in all their intersecting identities, must be front and center in all pandemic response measures, in social and economic recovery efforts, in the equitable distribution of vaccines, and in how we strengthen our health systems post-pandemic. And we must continue to safeguard the progress we’ve made towards gender equality, including hard-won gains for sexual and reproductive health and rights.
At this pivotal time, the work of Women Deliver and that of our partners, advocates, and Young Leaders is more important than ever. Read our Top Ten Recommendations to build back a stronger, more gender-equal world.
Our Policy Advocacy:
Since the start of the pandemic, Women Deliver has continued to advocate for gender equality and the sexual and reproductive health and rights of girls and women, while reinforcing the crucial importance of applying a gender lens to pandemic response and recovery plans. We have also adapted our ways of working to support our partners. For example:
- We are producing and contributing to evidence-based communications and advocacy tools to highlight how girls and women are being affected by COVID-19 and what measures are needed to address short-term and long-term implications on girls and women.
- Our latest research, “The Impact of COVID-19 on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights: Youth-led Perspectives and Solutions for a Gender-Equal World,” is the first study of its kind to highlight the experiences, insights, and perspectives of adolescents and youth on the gendered impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on SRHR.
- We are continuing to engage partners in the current virtual environment, and regularly hold webinars and online discussions to fuel joint advocacy efforts.
- In January 2021, we held a virtual multilingual launch event to unveil the findings of our multi-national survey looking at global public opinion and expectations for policymaking on gender equality, including as concerns gender-responsive pandemic response and recovery.
The Young Leaders Program:
The Young Leaders Program shifted its activities online as the COVID-19 pandemic made gathering in-person unsafe. Given that not all Young Leaders have consistent internet access, Women Deliver provided technology stipends to all Young Leaders in 2020, as well as additional stipends for virtual activities. Supported by technical assistance and coaching from Women Deliver staff and Regional Consultants, Young Leaders pivoted their advocacy projects in order to continue to drive impact within their communities despite pandemic-related constraints. Additionally, recognizing the confounding impacts of the pandemic on Young Leaders mental and physical health, program opportunities are flexible and are always accompanied by technical assistance and mentorship, as needed.
- Despite facing unique and unprecedented challenges, including skyrocketing unemployment, constraints in educational opportunities, and barriers to their health and rights, young people are leading the way in response and recovery efforts. Read more about their powerful efforts — from menstrual hygiene product distribution, to health education, to advocating for safe working conditions for healthcare workers in this blog and in this Story Map.
The Deliver for Good Campaign:
At the outset of the pandemic, the Deliver for Good (DfG) Campaign mobilized in digital space to call on governments and UN agencies to ensure a gender transformative response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Leveraging evidence and data from past pandemics, in April 2020, DfG mobilized rapidly to present the UN Secretary-General and heads of UN agencies with a private letter, urging the UN to apply a gender lens to response and recovery to the COVID-19 emergency, using the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as an essential roadmap. Several of the recommendations from the Deliver for Good letter were reflected in the official UN Framework developed to guide UN country offices in their COVID-19 response and recovery efforts.
- The above-mentioned private letter was converted into an open sign-on statement from Deliver for Good Campaign members. The letter, which targets global decision-makers, including international organizations and national governments, garnered over 700 signatories, and resulted in the inclusion of gender markers within the parameters of several COVID-19 Funds. The open- sign on statement also informed four documents that have been crucial to the international multilateral response to COVID-19: (i) the UN Secretary-General’s policy brief, The Impact of COVID-19 on Women; (ii) the World Health Assembly resolution on COVID-19 response; (iii) the UN General Assembly Omnibus Resolution on Comprehensive and Coordinated Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic; and (iv) the COVID-19 Global Humanitarian Response Plan.Deliver for Good partners in Kenya and Senegal have been both frontline responders and high-level advocates to strengthen their countries resiliency and response to COVID-19.
- Deliver for Good Kenya, led by the Center for Rights Education and Awareness (CREAW), has been active in responding and abating the steep increase in gender-based violence (GBV) in Nairobi and select counties, including by creating a crisis hotline, organizing sensitization trainings with police and probation departments, advocating for more safe houses and services centers, and providing free legal aid to survivors.
Women Deliver 2023 Conference:
Women Deliver is monitoring the COVID-19 pandemic globally to ensure the health and safety of all participants at WD2023. We are working closely with the Government of Rwanda to ensure that the Conference will be safe for all participants and Rwandans alike and that a convening of this size will not put a strain on Rwanda’s health system. There will be robust virtual engagement for those who would prefer to not attend WD2023 in-person. To learn more, please visit: https://www.wd2023.org/.
Women Deliver continues to advocate for a gender lens on COVID-19 recovery, push to fill disaggregated data gaps, secure the full and effective participation of girls and women in all aspects of pandemic response, and continue to advance gender equality. We are and will keep identifying and acting on advocacy opportunities, liaising with and listening to partners, collaborating with our many networks, and communicating across platforms to move the needle for gender equality.
Relevant Reading:
Below is a collection of relevant pieces on the intersection of gender equality and COVID-19:
- IPS News: Gender Equality is The Roadmap We Need to Overcome Our Most Pressing Global Challenges
Achieving gender equality, with a focus on girls’ and women’s health and rights, must be central to the actions we take in response to COVID-19.
*Written by Women Deliver Staff* - Forbes: Women Across 17 Countries Report Increased Stress, Household Work Due To COVID-19
An online survey covering men and women across 17 countries on six continents finds that COVID-19 has taken a disproportionate toll on women compared to men.
*Features Women Deliver Staff* - Reuters: Women work the COVID frontline but lack a voice, poll shows
Seven in 10 workers on the frontline of the pandemic are female yet women are left out of many COVID-19 response and recovery plans.
*Features Women Deliver Staff* - UN Policy Brief: The Impact of COVID-19 on Women
The scale of the impact of the pandemic on girls and women and recommendations to put women’s leadership and contributions at the heart of resilience and recovery. - Bloomberg: After the Pandemic, Put Women First
From education to entrepreneurship, global recovery efforts need to pay particular attention to the needs of women and girls. - The Lancet: COVID-19 – The Gendered Impacts of the Outbreak
The girls and women at greatest risk of COVID-19 – including female health workers and caregivers – and what must be done to help protect and support them. - Think Global Health: Gender and the Coronavirus Outbreak
The critical questions about gender that must be asked at the outset of every public health emergency. - Guttmacher: Estimates of the Potential Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs)
How the strain that the outbreak imposes on health systems and society’s responses to the pandemic, such as lockdowns, impact the SRH of individuals living in LMICs. - New York Times: Why Women Might Face Greater Risk of Catching Coronavirus
How traditional gender roles and inequalities might make girls and women more vulnerable to COVID-19, and what a gender-integrated response could look like.
- UNFPA: COVID-19 with A Gender Lens
How disease outbreaks affect women and men differently, including the sexual and reproductive health and psychosocial needs of female frontline health workers. - UN Women: Paying attention to women’s needs and leadership will strengthen COVID-19 response
Recommendations from UN Women that place women’s needs and leadership at the heart of an effective response to COVID-19. - Project Syndicate: A Gender Lens for COVID-19
How the most effective COVID-19 policy responses will be those that account for how the crisis is experienced by women and girls.
*Written by Women Deliver Staff* - Medium: Applying a Gender Lens to COVID-19 Response and Recovery
- Read our ten recommendations to ensure the unique needs of girls and women are addressed in COVID-19 response and recovery plans to build back a stronger, more gender-equal world.
*Written by Women Deliver Staff* - World Economic Forum: COVID-19 is the biggest setback to gender equality in a decade
How the pandemic is having a deep impact on women and is throwing away decades of hard-won battles both in terms of gender equality and women’s economic rights. - IPS News: COVID-19 Means we Must Innovate Data Collection, Especially on Gender
How COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns provide an opportunity to collect data in more innovative ways to ensure gender equality
*Features Women Deliver Staff* - CARE: ‘Where are the Women: The conspicuous absence of women in COVID-19 response teams and plans, and why we need them’
The urgency of increasing women’s leadership at all levels of the COVID-19 response, and ensuring humanitarian funding for local women’s rights and women-led organizations. - Adolescent Girls Investment Plan (AGIP) and Population Council: “Adolescent Girls & Covid 19: Mapping the evidence on interventions”
An evidence map of interventions to address the impact of COVID-19 on adolescent girls, as well as a map of where evidence is still lacking
