The Bright and Somber Hues of the Pandemic: a gendered perspective

At the moment, competing narratives are gaining currency about how countries should respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. What are the best ways to address COVID-19 while balancing health impacts, economics, and politics? As governments consider their options, the United Nations (UN) has highlighted the unique and detrimental effect the novel virus is having on women and girls. In 2018, the United Nations’ International Labor Organization published a report on women’s labor, revealing that women perform 76% of the total hours of unpaid care work globally, and thus bear the most “care-weight” during the COVID-19 crisis. In many countries, women are also doing much of the “essential work” while facing an array of complex inequalities and threats. We assess the COVID-19 pandemic as a social phenomenon through the lens of gender, identity politics and women’s rights, with a particular focus on civil society’s response in Central Europe. We observe that the crisis is intensifying pre-existing inequalities, jeopardizing access to maternal health and, in many places, cases of domestic violence are growing. Already some governments in Central Europe and North America are using the crisis as a pretext to advance anti-genderism. Our project looks at how women are impacted by COVID-19 and how women and civil society respond in Central Europe in particular. We look at local contexts of democracy and gender, on developing gender discourse, and on emerging policies; and, we identify major issues impacting women and civic society’s response.