The COVID-19 pandemic is reversing progress on girls’ and women’s rights, and shining a bright light on social, political, and economic inequities that persist. We are even further away from a world where girls and women are treated equally to boys and men.

Geeta Rao Gupta, senior adviser to the 3D Program for Girls and Women and UN Foundation senior fellow, and Michelle Milford Morse, our vice president for Girls and Women Strategy at the UN Foundation, reflect on an unconventional year and look ahead to their plans and outlook for 2021.

Michelle Milford Morse: Thinking about our work on gender equality, what stood out to you this past year?

Geeta Rao Gupta: Well, of course 2020 will be forever remembered by most as the year when the world was brought to its knees by an invisible virus. What I will most remember is the way it so quickly exposed the inequities between women and men, the hidden pandemic of violence against women, and the role that women play in the care economy.

The pandemic also called attention to the way in which domestic violence is a daily reality for women around the world. Due to the shutdowns, they’ve had to remain indoors with their abusers, putting them at extraordinary risk.

It’s not as if the data on domestic violence didn’t exist, or that women’s outsized role in the care economy wasn’t known, but COVID underscored it in a way that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. That is the only positive thing that emerged from this crisis. Now society is forced to pay attention to the way gender inequality, together with other inequalities based on race, class, ethnicity, caste, and other social stratifiers, make some people more vulnerable than others.

Read the full article about gaps in gender equality during COVID-19 with Michelle Milford Morse and Geeta Rao Gupta at United Nations Foundation.