Women have borne an outsized social, economic burden during pandemicFrom March 2020 to September 2021, women were more likely than men to lose their jobs, forego work to care for others, and report increasing violence, and women and girls were more likely than men and boys to drop out of school for reasons other than school closures, according to a study yesterday in The Lancet.University of Washington at Seattle researchers reviewing public datasets found that relative to men, women were more likely to report job loss (26.0% vs 20.4%) and staying home from work to care for others (1:8 ratio of men to women in March, 2.4 by September).
They were also 1.23 times more likely to say that gender-based violence had increased during the pandemic.Women and girls were 1.21 times more likely than men to say they dropped out of school for reasons other than school closures.
Women and men didn't significantly differ in terms of vaccine hesitancy or uptake.The study authors said that the disparities highlighted in the study show that the pandemic exacerbated already-widespread inequalities between men and women."Political and social leaders should prioritise policies that enable and encourage women to participate in the labour force and continue their education, thereby equipping and enabling them with greater ability to overcome the barriers they face," they wrote.In a Lancet news release, senior author Emmanuela Gakidou, PhD, called for an investment in empowering women to ensure that progress toward gender equity doesn't unravel further. "We cannot let the social and economic fallouts from the pandemic continue into the post-COVID era," she said. "Action must be taken now to not only reverse the current disparities, but to