Intimate partner violence: How are we protecting against domestic violence? ↓

We are concerned that domestic violence rates will rise during lockdown periods. It is critical that those experiencing violence have services to access.

Campaigners expect domestic-violence rates to rise during lockdown periods. Stress, alcohol consumption, and financial difficulties are all considered triggers for violence in the home, and the quarantine measures being imposed around the world will increase all three. [1]

The British charity Women’s Aid said in a statement that it was “concerned that social distancing and self-isolation will be used as a tool of coercive and controlling behaviour by perpetrators, and will shut down routes to safety and support.” [2]

These secondary effects of the pandemic are already being experienced in China, with activists reporting a surge in cases of domestic abuse as a result of the lockdown. [3]

Wan Fei, a retired police officer who now runs an anti-domestic violence nonprofit organisation in Jingzhou, Hubei, said the number of cases has almost doubled since the quarantine began.

“The epidemic has had a huge impact on domestic violence,” the activist said. [4]

“According to our statistics, 90% of the causes of violence are related to the Covid-19 epidemic.” [5]

“The imposition of self-isolation can amplify the abuser’s ability to restrict women’s freedoms and leave them at heightened risk” [6]

Previous studies of emergency situations, including infectious disease outbreaks such as the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014–2015, revealed that women and girls experienced high rates of sexual violence and abuse. [7]

It was the “silent epidemic” experienced by women and girls who often had few options but to seek shelter in environments that they knew were dangerous. [8]

For a woman who has been planning to leave her violent husband or family, the consequence of travel bans and city lockdowns is dire. [9]

What protection options are available for women migrant domestic workers who may be trapped in violent and abusive arrangements under self-isolation policies in the Asia and Pacific region? [10]

There is a vital need to ensure that sexual and reproductive services are prioritised during the Covid-19 crisis to ensure women and girls have access to services for maternal care, to prevent unwanted pregnancies, and for survivors of gender-based violence. [11]

Gendered division of labour: Where is the burden of care work falling? ↓

Those doing care work who are currently on the front line - and risking the most exposure to COVID-19 - tend to be women, as care roles are deeply gendered. We need gender-sensitive responses for the gendered impact of this pandemic.

Typical gender roles can influence where men and women spend their time, and the infectious agents they come into contact with, as well as the nature of exposure, its frequency and its intensity [12]

Front-line health professionals and workers most exposed to the infectious disease are likely to be women: nurses, nurse aides, teachers, child care workers, aged-care workers, and cleaners are mostly women. [13]

Globally women make up around 70% of the health workforce. [14]

In China’s Hubei Province, where the current coronavirus outbreak originated, about 90 percent of health care workers are women. [15]

Women around the world are also more likely to take on the burden of care at home, particularly if someone in their family is sick. [16]

Sophie Harman explains that the feminised unpaid reproductive care economy ‘acts as a “shock absorber” in periods of crisis ... Women absorb the burden of care through self-exploitation (leading to direct and indirect health impacts on women as a gender), reliance on family, or outsourcing care roles to poorer women’. [17]

During the West African Ebola outbreak, the majority of care was provided by women, many of whom continue to suffer from the psychological trauma of being solely responsible for the ill and from the fear of contracting and passing on the virus, particularly to their children (Abramowitz et al. 2015). [18]

Noting the sensitive nature of care work, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin writes that ‘humanitarian assistance and other forms of crisis intervention should not increase women’s vulnerability, neither by undermining their coping strategies nor by reinforcing damaging coping strategies’ (2010, 13). [19]

In other words, the care work provided by women should be supported, while providing alternatives that empower women. [20]

Economically speaking, outbreaks could have a disproportionately negative impact on women, who make up a large chunk of part-time and informal workers around the world. Those kinds of jobs are also usually the first to get sliced in periods of economic uncertainty. [21]

And during outbreaks, when women have to give up work and income to stay home, they often find it harder to spring back after the crisis, said Dr. Julia Smith, a health policy researcher at Simon Fraser University. While “everybody’s income was affected by the Ebola outbreak in West Africa,” Smith said, “men’s income returned to what they had made pre-outbreak faster than women’s income.” [22]

Sexual and Reproductive Health: What is considered essential health care? ↓

We are seeing threats to sexual and reproductive health during the COVID-19 response in disrupting services that are considered “nonessential” - like abortion access in Texas and Ohio. Conservative politicians are using the pandemic to restrict basic human rights. This is not ok.

Dealing with COVID-19 is likely to create imbalances in health care provision, disruption of routine essential services and to require redeployment of scarce health personnel across health services. [23]

Acute and emergency maternal and reproductive health services may be hit hardest, with limited facilities for isolation areas to assess and care for women in labour and the newborn. [24]

Life-saving procedures, from caesarean sections to abortion care, may be delayed due to staff deployment and shortages and lack of infrastructure, e.g. operation theatres and ward space. [25]

Women who have to spend time recovering in hospital wards in low-income countries are often reliant on relatives for food and care, making isolation and infection control measures difficult and intensifying the risks of COVID-19 spread. [26]

The effects of the pandemic could also affect routine health care services. Clinic appointments are rare in low-income settings and people can wait long hours at crowded clinic waiting areas for antenatal care, contraceptive counselling or other reproductive health services, which will increase risk of infection transmission. [27]

Cancellation of routine clinics may be necessary with deployment of staff away to acute care. - Those most disadvantaged may incur costs, suffer travel for long distances and other inconveniences needlessly, or even not attend for care at all. [28]

During the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, maternal health clinics were closed as resources were diverted to the outbreak response. [29]

Consequently, the maternal mortality rate in the region, already one of the highest in the world, increased by 70 percent. [30]*

Gender blind policy response: Who is making decisions about the pandemic response? ↓

Those in leadership often do not face the struggles the average citizen does. We need to hear from every corner of society when making decisions about how to protect the most vulnerable.

World leaders are mostly men, and these men tend to represent the elite and dominant social group. For example, President Donald J. Trump recently announced the President’s Coronavirus Task Force of twelve men, eleven of whom are white. [31]

The Global Health 50/50 Report [PDF] from 2019 finds that 72% of executive heads in global health are men. [32]

Equity issues are only meaningfully integrated into emergency responses when women and marginalised groups are able to participate in decision making. [33]

Resources: What are We Funding to Keep People “Secure”? ↓

Governments should move money from defence and military budgets to fund what truly keeps humans safe: access to housing, food, healthcare, and education. Militarism won’t be a solution to pandemics. Human security will. We must change our priorities and language.

“In Mid March as the pandemic dominated world news, the Pentagon unveiled its £844 million hypersonic, unmanned missile. At the same time, the US federal government was unable to produce or provide enough masks for healthcare workers treating patients. [...] Will defence budgets be requisitioned and reallocated to support the frontline health care system and unemployed or will they remain intact as other services are slashed? Why are we awash in weapons and military equipment, but short on medics and masks?” [34] “Today, one can imagine that waging “a World War II-type war” against a fast-spreading disease is a desirable strategy only if one willfully ignores the findings of feminist historians and refuses to absorb the crucial political lessons they have taught us about the actual costs of turning any collective civic effort into a “war.” To mobilize society today to provide effective, inclusive, fair and sustainable public health, we need to learn the lessons that feminist historians of wars have offered us.” [35] Americans and Canadians are buying guns in record numbers. This is exacerbated by the usage of militarised language by the government in misguided analogies about COVID-19 and the collective action we must take. For example, some commonly seen phrases are “Waging a war against an invisible enemy;” “we will defeat;” and “patriotic duty.” [36] Militarism and the heavy investment of money in the weapons industry means that state money is tied up in the military-industrial complex and not more available for other sectors, like healthcare, and for life-saving resources. Governments invest over two trillion USD in militarism each year - money which could be used to instead care for the health and social wellbeing of the average person, and thereby creating more stable and sustainably peaceful societies. [37] Excluding spend on nuclear weapons, US military spending reached $649 billion in 2018, which is more than the next top eight spenders combined. It is expected that money spent on maintaining and expanding nuclear weapons in the nine nuclear possessing states will reach the trillions in the coming decades. [38] Investment in militarised security means that military becomes the default answer to every single actual or perceived threat. In Serbia, the army has been tasked with protecting the hospitals and medical staff. But the medical staff doesn’t need guns for protection. They need adequate equipment, staff, and infrastructure. [39]

References ↓