Giving Compass' Take:

• Women and girls in Africa face many challenges brought on by the pandemic, prompting African governments to utilize a gender lens when creating policies in crisis response.

• What types of challenges are women and girls facing that are exacerbated by COVID-19? 

• Read about other examples of a race and gender lens for COVID-19 response. 

Women and girls in Africa are among the most vulnerable groups exposed to the negative impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. Although preliminary evidence from China, Italy, and New York shows that men are at higher risk of contraction and death from the disease—more than 58 percent of COVID-19 patients were men, and they had an over 60 percent higher rate of fatality over women—certain preexisting socioeconomic conditions of women make them more exposed to the indirect consequences of the pandemic, requiring specific policy responses to mitigate their plight.

First, women in Africa are overrepresented at the front lines of the response to the pandemic—meaning women, as direct caregivers, are more directly exposed to the virus. Over 60 percent of Africa’s health workforce and essential social service providers are female, even as high as 91 percent in Egypt. Second, back at home, women shoulder far more care work than men—up to 11 times more in places like Mali. Additional care needs from school closures as a result of the lockdowns and elderly relatives who need to be specially taken care of mean that women have to provide even more care services at home while still working, mainly because of entrenched traditional norms on gender roles in many African countries. The extra care work at home from the lockdowns is estimated at around 4 hours per day.

Compounding these difficulties, women are at a higher risk of job and income losses during the pandemic: Evidence from the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014 shows that women suffered more economic losses as a result of that crisis. Similarly, the coronavirus pandemic primarily affects the types of jobs often done by women in service sectors such as air travel, hospitality, tourism, food and beverage, and retail services in general.

Read the full article about protecting women and girls' safety during COVID-19 by Chuku Chuku, Adamon Mukasa, and Yasin Yenice at Brookings.