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Covid-19 has brought on unprecedented challenges on people, families, firms & economies and it is not impacting women and men the same way. As social distancing, lockdowns & fund commitments dominate response strategies, here's how the gender differential is showing up
Reports indicate fatalities are higher among men than women. This was also the case for previous SARS & MERS outbreaks. The trend is the same across the world (for countries reporting with sex disaggregated data) and in India (a country where we are directly undertaking gender mapping of fatalities and incidence). Get a glimpse of our early data & insights here
The incidence gender gap indicates a max 20 per cent difference in incidence among women & men while 70 per cent of the countries included in our analysis here reported incidence gender gap below 10 per cent with similar number of countries reporting higher incidence among women compared to men and vice versa. (A specific data driven insight on the incidence gender gap will be posted later this week. At the moment, data in the visualisation below includes countries that have reported incidence with sex disaggregated data in April 2020. Data for some of the reporting countries was updated this morning - 6th April 2020. the positive figures indicate higher incidence among men than women; negative figures indicate higher inicidence among women compared to men.)
Only two of all reporting countries have shown a zero incidence gender gap among women and men infected by Covid-19 coronavirus (use this insight with caution given these are early days and only a handful of countries are reporting niciidence and fatality with sex disaggregated data)
Sex & Gender are important determinants and key drivers for an effective risk assessment and response design. However countries (including India, UK & the United States) are still not doing the minimum - reporting cases & deaths among women & men. Given that all coronavirus outbreaks (SARS, MERS and Covid-19) have shown that fatalities are higher among men, sex disaggregated data can provide clues to researchers working on developing vaccines and treatments for such diseases.
Emerging evidence indicates task forces set up in several countries to manage the Covid-19 pandemic lacks gender balance.
As the focus on incidence & fatality continues the shadow pandemic of violence against women aggravated by the Covid-19 response strategies is also taking shape. countries have started reporting on the same as activists and UN start drawing attention to the issue. more on this emerging story in a follow up GIS insight
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