COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND ITS IMPLICATION FOR VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN: LESSONS FROM 2014 EBOLA VIRUS PANDEMIC
Abstract
The onset of Covid-19 pandemic bought a dramatic change in the health needs of the world’s populations and further constituted a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Evidences and outcomes from past global outbreaks of infectious diseases suggest that pandemics more often than not, exacerbate vulnerabilities that are already present before the pandemic outbreak. This further compounds existing gender based inequalities and vulnerabilities, thus increasing the risks of abuse. Violence against women, is accepted globally as a major violation of women’s human rights and a significant public health concern. In the event of a pandemic, life-saving care and support for gender-based violence survivors are neglected due to health service providers being overstretched by the pandemic outbreak. This results in the gender needs of women being overlooked with resultant deleterious effects on women. In this paper, gender issues and vulnerability of women to abuse during pandemic outbreaks were highlighted. Lessons from the 2014 Ebola epidemic which rose to become a regional crisis in West Africa, was then used to develop mechanism that will better inform gender inclusive policy development and responses for mitigating violence against women during and after the COVID 19 pandemic. Adopting these mechanisms/lessons in the event of a pandemic would help in achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5.2 which calls for the eradication of all forms of violence against women and girls in both public and private spaces.
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights (2020). Statement on Covid-19. Available at https://www.actioncanadashr.org/news/2020-03-13-statementcovid-19. [Accessed 16 Nov 2022].
African Development Bank. Women’s Resilience: Integrating Gender in the Response to Ebola. Available at https://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/ Documents/Generic-Documents/AfDB_Women_s_Resilience__Integrating_ Gender_in_the_Response_to_Ebola.pdf. [Accessed 18 Nov 2022].
American Civil Liberties Union (2020). ACLU Follow Up Letter Urging COVID-19 Voting Legislation. https://www.aclu.org/letter/aclu-follow-letter-urging-covid-19-voting- legislation-3222020.
Barron, G. C., Laryea-Adjei, G., Vike-Freiberga, V., Abubakar, I., Dakkak, H., Devakumar, D., ... & on COVID, L. C. (2022). Safeguarding people living in vulnerable conditions in the COVID-19 era through universal health coverage and social protection. The Lancet Public Health, 7(1), e86-e92.
Benebo, F. O., Schumann, B., & Vaezghasemi, M. (2018). Intimate partner violence against women in Nigeria: a multilevel study investigating the effect of women’s status and community norms. BMC women's health, 18(1), 136.
Bennett, B., and Sara, E. D, International Affairs 92: 5 (2016) 1041-1060, “A gendered human rights analysis of Ebola and Zika: Locating gender in global health emergencies.” 3 Kivu Security Tracker, Congo Research Group and Human Rights Watch, December 2017
Bergenfeld, I., Sales, J. M., Minh, T. H., & Yount, K. M. (2022). Measuring Sexual Communication in Adolescent Dating Relationships in Vietnam: Development and Validation of the Sexual Communications Scales for Attitudes, Self-Efficacy, and Behavior. Communication Studies, 73(4), 380-396.
Beydoun, H.A, Beydoun, M.A, Kaufman, J.S, Lo, B., Zonderman, A.B. Intimate partner violence against adult women and its association with major depressive disorder, depressive symptoms and postpartum depression: a systematic review and meta- analysis. Soc Sci Med. 2012;75(6):959–75.
Bukuluki, P., Kisaakye, P., Bulenzi-Gulere, G., Mulindwa, B., Bazira, D., Letiyo, E., ... & Nissling, S. (2023). Vulnerability to violence against women or girls during COVID- 19 in Uganda. BMC public health, 23(1), 1-10.
CARE + IRC (2020). Global rapid gender analysis for COVID-19, 2020
CARE Vanuatu, Leftemap Sista II Women and Girls Empowerment Program Design document, 1 July 2017 – 30 June 2021
Charlie, D., Megan, W., and Emma, Barker-Perez. (2020). CARE Rapid Gender Analysis COVID-19 Pacific Region, 2020
Chattu, V. K., & Yaya, S. (2020). Emerging infectious diseases and outbreaks: implications for women's reproductive health and rights in resource-poor settings. Reproductive health, 17(1), 43. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12978-020-0899-y
Chernet, A. G., & Cherie, K. T. (2020). Prevalence of intimate partner violence against women and associated factors in Ethiopia. BMC women's health, 20(1), 1-7.
Coltart, C. E., Lindsey, B., Ghinai, I., Johnson, A. M., & Heymann, D. L. (2017). The Ebola outbreak, 2013–2016: old lessons for new epidemics. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 372(1721), 20160297.
Davies, S. E., & Bennett, B. (2016). A gendered human rights analysis of Ebola and Zika: l ocating gender in global health emergencies. International Affairs, 92(5), 1041-1060.
De Paz, C., Muller, M., Munoz Boudet, A. M., & Gaddis, I. (2020). Gender Dimensions of the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Dean, L., Churchill, B., & Ruppanner, L. (2022). The mental load: building a deeper theoretical understanding of how cognitive and emotional labor over load women and mothers. Community, Work & Family, 25(1), 13-29.
Ellsberg, M., Ugarte, W., Ovince, J., Blackwell, A., & Quintanilla, M. (2020). Long-term change in the prevalence of intimate partner violence: a 20-year follow-up study in León, Nicaragua, 1995-2016. BMJ global health, 5(4), e002339.
Global, A. I. D. S. update 2020. Seizing the moment: Tackling entrenched inequalities to end epidemics. Geneva: Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS); 2020.
Harman, S. (2016). Ebola, gender and conspicuously invisible women in global health governance. Third World Quarterly, 37(3), 524-541.
Heise, L., Greene, M. E., Opper, N., Stavropoulou, M., Harper, C., Nascimento, M., ... & Henry, S. (2019). Gender inequality and restrictive gender norms: framing the challenges to health. The Lancet.
Howard, L. M. (2017). Routine enquiry about violence and abuse is needed for all mental health patients. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 210(4), 298-298.
https://www.afro.who.int/news/coronavirus-disease-what-you-need-know
https://www.unfpa.org/news/gender-based-violence-spikes-amid-pandemic-shelters-need- support (UNFPA 2020)
https://www.unfpa.org/press/women-girls-health-workers-must-not-be-overlooked-global- covid-19-response
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/violence-against-women (2017)
ILO, World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends for women 2017 (Geneva, 2017). Available at: http://www.ilo.org/global/research/global-reports/weso/trends-for- women2017/lang--en/index.htm
Kabir, R., & Khan, H. T. (2019). A cross-sectional study to explore intimate partner violence and barriers to empowerment of women in Armenia. BioMed research international, 2019.
Malathesh, B. C., Das, S., & Chatterjee, S. S. (2020). COVID-19 and domestic violence against women. Asian journal of psychiatry, 53, 102227.
Pincock, K., Jones, N., Mitu, K., Guglielmi, S., & Iyasu, A. (2022). COVID‐19, state (in) visibility and structural violence in low‐and middle‐income countries. International Social Science Journal, 72(245), 869-885.
Schwartz, D.A., Adhiambo, O.M., Resnick, K., Davis, A.,Ramesh, .R (2019) Pregnant in the Time of Ebola. (2019). “Gender-based violence among adolescent girls and young women: A neglected consequence of the West African Ebola outbreak,” pages 121-13
Sohrabi, C., Alsafi, Z., O’Neill, N., Khan, M., Kerwan, A., Al-Jabir, A., ... & Agha, R. (2020). World Health Organization declares global emergency: A review of the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19). International Journal of Surgery.
Stubbs, A., & Szoeke, C. (2022). The effect of intimate partner violence on the physical health and health-related behaviors of women: A systematic review of the literature. Trauma, violence, & abuse, 23(4), 1157-1172.
UN Women, The COVID-19 Outbreak and Gender: Key Advocacy Points from Asia and the Pacific, March 2020
UNDP (2015). Africa Policy Note. Confronting the gender impact of Ebola virus disease in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Retrieved from https://www. africa.undp.org/content/rba/en/home/presscenter/articles/2015/02/27/ebola-no- lasting-recovery-without-a-special-focus-on-women-says-undp/. Accessed 17 Mar 2020.
United Nations. Transforming our world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. New York: United Nations; 2015.
Wamoyi, J., Fenwick, A., Urassa, M., Zaba, B., & Stones, W. (2011). “Women’s bodies are shops”: beliefs about transactional sex and implications for understanding gender power and HIV prevention in Tanzania. Archives of sexual behavior, 40(1), 5-15.
Wang, Y., Fu, Y., Ghazi, P., Gao, Q., Tian, T., Kong, F., ... & Qiao, J. (2022). Prevalence of intimate partner violence against infertile women in low-income and middle-income countries: a systematic review and meta-analysis. The Lancet Global Health, 10(6), e820-e830.
World Health Organization. Global and regional estimates of violence against women: prevalence and health effects of intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2013.
Wu, J. T., Leung, K., & Leung, G. M. (2020). Nowcasting and forecasting the potential domestic and international spread of the 2019-nCoV outbreak originating in Wuhan, China: a modelling study. The Lancet, 395(10225), 689-697.
Yakubovich, A. R., & Maki, K. (2022). Preventing gender-based homelessness in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond: the need to account for violence against women. Violence against women, 28(10), 2587-2599.
WUSU, A. S., OLABANJO, O. A., & AKANBI, M. A. (2022). A model for analysing the dynamics of the second wave of corona virus (COVID–19) in Nigeria. J. Math. Comput. Sci.-JMCS, 16-21.
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
ISSN (Print): 2276-8645
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.