The gendered nature of the Pandemic: A review on the impact of COVID-19 on Women

Delhi The COVID-19 crisis has disrupted everyone’s life around the globe. This global pandemic is not just a health emergency but also an unequivocal challenge that humankind has never faced. The COVID-19 Pandemic has affected economic, social, and health phenomena around the globe. It has created deep stresses and shocks worldwide, impacting men, women, and marginalized sections differently. The implications of the crisis are never gender-neutral, and COVID-19 is no exception. Women are serving on the frontlines of healthcare against COVID-19, and are adversely facing the crisis of this pandemic. Women have compounded burdens to perform: they are highly over-represented in health systems, also do the majority of unpaid care work in households, severely face high risks of economic and social insecurity (both today and tomorrow), and deal with increased risks of violence, exploitation, abuse or harassment during times of crisis and quarantine. While most people’s lives and work have been deeply impacted by the crisis, studies say that women’s jobs and livelihoods are more vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic. It has been found that job loss rates of women due to COVID-19 are about 1.8 times higher than job loss rates of men globally, which stand at 5.7 percent versus 3.1 percent respectively. The pandemic has had and will continue to have a major impact on the physical, emotional, and mental health, job insecurity, and overall well-being of women. It has disrupted the milestone of achieving gender equality by 2030 and has laid unprecedented challenges to cover further. This paper aims to explore the gendered nature of the COVID-19 crisis and highlight the challenges that women are facing in keeping up with their physical health, social health, emotional health, and financial well-being. It also intends to suggest strategies that how the gendered impact of the COVID-19 crisis can be mitigated. Strategies include policies for domestic violence, access to digital technologies and the internet, access to menstrual health and reproductive health products, expanded social assistance, etc.