A recent research by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington has revealed that women have experienced greater negative social and economic impacts of Covid than men. The ongoing pandemic possess a serious threat of reversing all the progress which has been made towards gender equality.
A massive gender gap was seen in employment and uncompensated labour. Globally, nearly 26 per cent of women reported a loss of work compared with 20 per cent of men in September 2021.
Not just this but women and girls were also more likely to drop out of school and more likely to report an increase in gender-based violence. Senior author Prof Emmanuela Gakidou, in a report by The Guardian, said, “This study provides the first comprehensive global evidence on gender disparities for a wide range of health-related, social and economic indicators throughout the pandemic.”
“The evidence suggests that Covid-19 has tended to exacerbate previously existing social and economic disparities rather than create new inequalities.”
Also read | Anxiety and depression cases surged by over 25% due to Covid: WHO
As a part of the study, publicly available datasets were analysed from 193 countries. Surveys were taken from March 2020 to September 2021 on health and wellbeing during the pandemic.
It was then concluded that everywhere, women experienced higher rates of employment loss than men.
Dr Luisa Flor, the study’s co-lead author was quoted by The Guardian as saying, “Economic impacts have affected women more than men in some countries because they tend to be employed disproportionately in sectors harder-hit by Covid-19, such as the hospitality industry or as domestic workers.”
Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation has said that cases of anxiety and depression have surged by over 25 per cent globally as Covid has taken a severe toll on the mental health of people.
During a scientific brief, the organisation revealed that there was a 25.6 per cent hike in cases of anxiety disorders all across the globe.
Here as well, women have been the worst affected.
There have been 374 million cases of anxiety disorders around the world in 2020. Out of these, nearly 76 million were new cases caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
(With inputs from agencies)
