Around the world women and girls have disproportionately suffered the socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19. Before the pandemic, women were doing three times as much unpaid care and domestic work as men. Data from UN Women shows that women make up 70% of the health workforce worldwide and are therefore at the forefront of the COVID-19 response; in 11 countries where sex-disaggregated data is available women account for 71% of confirmed cases among health care workers. On many fronts, the limited gains made on gender equity over the last decades are at risk of being rolled back.
The COVID-19 pandemic and efforts to control the disease have shocked local and global labour markets, threatened livelihoods, introduced new workplace risks and made unstable work relationships even more precarious. Women have borne the brunt of layoffs and loss of livelihoods, sacrificed their own health at the frontlines of the pandemic response and disproportionately shouldered the burden of the additional caregiving associated with COVID-19.
To address the gendered impacts of COVID-19, Canada's International Development Research Centre, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council have launched Women RISE (Women's health and economic empowerment for a COVID-19 Recovery that is Inclusive, Sustainable and Equitable), a CAD22M research initiative. Women RISE will support global action-oriented, gender-transformative research on how women's health and their work, whether paid or unpaid, intersect and interact in the preparation for, response to and recovery from COVID-19. Under the initiative, teams of researchers from low- and middle- income countries and Canada will inform solutions and strategies to improve women's health and socioeconomic well-being throughout the recovery from COVID-19.
Women RISE takes action on global research priorities identified in the United Nations Research Roadmap for the COVID-19 Recovery and is part of Canada's commitment to gender equality, to empowering women and girls around the world and to promoting their human rights and well-being.
