Session recordings available here.Covid-19 has not been gender-neutral. While men have suffered higher mortality rates, women and girls are disproportionately affected by the socioeconomic impacts: taking on the majority of unpaid care work like childcare, schools and other services have been shut or scaled back, being overrepresented in the most vulnerable sections of the informal economy, and facing a shadow pandemic of rising rates of gender-based violence.
Despite this, social protection responses to COVID have rarely considered gender in their design and implementation. This session explored why this has been the case – why have we not done more to respond to women and girls’ specific needs, what do we need to do to ensure a gender-responsive recovery, and how can we ensure a better response to the next crisis. The session looked to the future to discuss how we can build back stronger with more gender-responsive social protection systems.
