Impacts of the Pandemic on Women and Girls
By: Sarosh A. B. Shivji
During the pandemic, services that were not considered essential were shut down. Access to reproductive health care has diminished during the pandemic across the world. This has made it harder for women and girls to succeed and achieve in an already difficult time. Loss of access to regular check ups, treatment for illnesses, and abortion clinics, has made life for women and girls around the world much harder than necessary. Women and girls have an opportunity in 2021 to pursue all goals, to move out of poverty, and to strive for things never before imagined, yet due to something as simple as access to reproductive health services this has become nearly impossible. In addition to these challenges, women and girls face even more gender-based violence at home. Mental and physical abuse have skyrocketed, and have held women back, as more and more of us are choosing to stop pursuing careers to help at home. Our economies cannot afford to lose half of its workforce because of abuse and lack of access to health care. Some of our most ingenious ideas and influential people have been from women, from Marie Curie and Mary Engle Pennington to Kamala Harris. When we come out of the pandemic we need to see an increase in the percentage of women in STEM. An increase from its miniscule 28%. We need to see more women being safe, and being able to live their lives without fear of abuse. We need to make sure that women are following their passions and receiving access to reproductive healthcare.
It’s been said that women are the backbone of our society, but women and girls deserve equal opportunity, and we all need to have the strength women have had to hold up our society. No longer will women’s ambitions be second, women and girls should be able to pursue whatever they wish in 2021. This will benefit not only all members of society but our wallets as well.
Works Cited
COVID-19 has “devastating” effect on women and girls. DEFINE_ME. (2020, August 1). https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31679-2/fulltext.
