Giving Compass' Take:

• Sohini Bhattacharya explains that traditional gender roles put women in India in the path of direct and indirect harm from COVID-19.

• How can you work to protect women in India during this pandemic and beyond? 

• Read more about people who are most vulnerable during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

We are in the middle of a pandemic, one that is moving relentlessly and bringing us collectively to our knees. We have already been dealing with another pandemic; one which is not talked about much—violence against women and girls, which has a strike rate of 1 in 3 women. How do these two pandemics relate to each other?

But experience and research show that in an epidemic or a calamity, a gender analysis of both the preparedness and the response to the calamity improves both gender and health equity.

Health emergencies are not gender-neutral

During the 2014–16 West African outbreak of the Ebola virus, it was established that women were more likely to be infected by the virus, as they played prominent roles as caregivers within their families, and as frontline healthcare workers. Women were also affected when resources for reproductive and sexual health were diverted to the emergency response. This contributed to a rise in maternal mortality in a region which had one of the highest rates in the world. During the Zika virus outbreak, differences in power between men and women meant that women did not have autonomy over their sexual and reproductive lives. This was aggravated by their lack of—or inadequate access to—healthcare and financial resources to travel to hospitals for check-ups.

It looks like we are facing a similar scenario again. While there is no data yet that tells us whether COVID-19 affects more women or men, 67 percent of health workers worldwide are women. They are, and will be, at the forefront of this battle. Many among them will be part-time workers—more women than men. They will be the first to be laid off or given shorter contracts during and after the crisis.

Read the full article about COVID-19 and women in India by Sohini Bhattacharya at India Development Review.