Comprising a majority of healthcare workers, care givers, and community volunteers, women are playing an outsized role in pandemic response.  Yet despite their vast contributions to response and recovery efforts across the globe, women and girls bear extraordinary burdens amidst the pandemic. Economic disadvantage, education exclusion, reduced access to medical care, and exposure to rising domestic violence, to name the obvious few, all place enormous pressures on the lives and livelihoods of women and girls.

While the COVID-19 pandemic is viewed primarily as a global health crisis, we are also beginning to better understand how this catastrophe is deeply impacting the social, economic, political, and cultural fabric of our societies. In times of crisis, disparities become even more apparent and are often exacerbated. COVID-19’s disproportionate effects on women and girls has again spotlighted, and also deepened, society’s long-neglected gender inequalities. And what is more disconcerting is that these events coupled with the widespread dismissal of women’s unique needs and circumstances, threaten to unravel years of hard-won progress.

To ensure progress is propelled forward and not lost, it is important to gain some context to the many ways this pandemic is affecting women and girls around the world. A deepened frame of reference affords us an opportunity to address the short falls with solutions that endure beyond the pandemic. The status, health and safety of women is not a “women’s issue” but is interconnected with so many others that impact us all. We must attend to the issues collectively so we can ensure inclusive solutions.

This session offers a broad overview of how the COVID-19 pandemic is disproportionately effecting women and girls. During this session, panelists will discuss how philanthropists are directing their funding to support women and girls in their communities. Panelists will highlight areas where there is still much to be done to safeguard females in the community.