The impact of the coronavirus pandemic on global gender equality – As equals

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She had no idea that the 19-year-old had started exchanging cash for cash to help pay for food for her three younger brothers and two cousins, who live together in a one-bedroom house. a waterfront slum community in Mombasa, Kenya. When Bella came home with rice and other ingredients for dinner at the end of the day, she didn’t explain how she bought them.

“The pandemic devastated the economy, especially for my area. So I had to help in one way or another with spending,” Bella told WhatsApp. The teenager asked for her name to be changed to protect her identity.

Before the pandemic, Bella was a high school student in the city, where she was an avid history student and enjoyed playing table tennis with friends during class breaks. But in March, as Covid-19 spread, Kenya closed schools as well.

Unable to continue her distance learning due to a lack of electricity and internet access and her mother’s income from selling vegetables on the street, Bella began washing clothes to contribute to the family’s income.

“God, that day my mother almost killed me. My mother was so angry with me that she beat me. I don’t want to talk about it. She didn’t know I had an affair with that man.”

BELL


When one of her much older clients pressured her for sex, saying she would pay 1,000 Kenyan shillings ($ 9) or 1,500 shillings ($ 13) for unprotected sex – three times what she paid him. for washing clothes. – he felt he couldn’t say no. After finding out she was pregnant, she disappeared.

“The pandemic played the biggest role I had in this pregnancy right now, because if the pandemic hadn’t been here, I would have been at school. Like washing clothes and all that, meeting that man, no it would have happened, “said Bella, who is currently receiving social assistance and cash transfers through ActionAid, a group of international campaigns. She completes it with strange jobs and laundry.

Now three months pregnant, Bella said she would not be able to resume her education when schools in Kenya reopened completely in January – a friend of her mother’s, who had helped pay taxes, withdrew her support.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) estimates that nearly 24 million children and adolescents, including 11 million girls and young women like Bella, could drop out of education next year due to the economic impact of the pandemic (130 million of girls were already out of school, according to the agency). This reality not only threatens to pull back decades of progress on gender equality, but also puts girls around the world at risk of child labor, teenage pregnancy, forced marriage and violence, experts say.
“It’s a kind of vicious cycle,” said Stefania Giannini, UNESCO’s deputy director-general for education, noting that girls who became pregnant during the blockade are not only less likely to return to school, with policies and practices in some countries specifically prohibiting their participation. in education. The teenage pregnancy during the pandemic threatens to block a million girls from education in sub-Saharan Africa alone, according to a report by World Vision, a member of UNESCO’s Global Coalition for Education Covid-19.

For many girls, school is not just a place to learn and a path to a brighter future, adds Gianni, it is also a lifeline – providing vital nutritional services, menstrual hygiene management, sexual health information and social support. .

Previous crises have shown that girls are the first to be taken out of class and the last to return. When the Ebola outbreak led to the closure of schools in West Africa from 2014 to 2016, girls faced increasing poverty, child labor and teenage pregnancy, preventing them in some cases from resuming their studies, reports said. UNICEF, Save the Children and UNDP.
In Sierra Leone, the pregnancy rate has more than doubled to 14,000, according to UNICEF. And many girls in the country have never returned to class, in part because of a recently canceled policy that banned pregnant girls from going to school, Plan International reported. Enrollment fell by 16 percentage points in the most affected communities in Sierra Leone, according to a working paper published by the World Bank.
Using data on school dropouts from the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, the Malala Fund estimated that another 20 million high school-age girls could be left out of school long after the coronavirus pandemic passed.

“The pandemic played the biggest role when I had this pregnancy right now, because if the pandemic hadn’t been here, I would have been at school. Meeting that man would not have happened at all.” .

BELL

The repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic on girls could be felt for generations.

Earlier this year, UNFPA designed that blockades lasting at least six months could lead to an additional 7 million unintended pregnancies and 31 million cases of gender-based violence, as well as 13 million marriages and 2 million cases of female genital mutilation in the next decade .
Covid-19 will also push 47 million women and girls into poverty, according to an analysis commissioned by the UN Women and UNDP, which estimates that approximately 435 million women and girls will live on less than $ 1.90 per year. day until 2021. According to the report, the number of women and girls living in extreme poverty will not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2030.

“With the impact of Covid, we see a very rapid and dramatic setback in the progress we have made in terms of gender equality,” said Julia Sánchez, Secretary General of ActionAid, highlighting the problems that lawyers have taken in recent years. , such as in stopping genital mutilation.

“Suddenly, it was as if we all turned our backs and started going in the opposite direction.”

In an ActionAid survey of 1,219 women, mostly between the ages of 18 and 30, in urban areas of India, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa, only about 22% of those surveyed said they could continue their education. Remote. However, the survey was limited by the fact that young women were interviewed based on their willingness and willingness to respond – only about 25% were currently in some form of education.

Outside of school and facing extreme economic insecurity, many of the girls surveyed said they were forced to take on a greater burden of unpaid care and housework, found themselves unable to access sexual and reproductive health services. which saved their lives – including birth control – and were more vulnerable to gender-based violence.

Incidents of reported violence were particularly high in Kenya (76%), where young women surveyed repeatedly mentioned sexual abuse and early pregnancy. Echoing Bella’s story, several girls and young women who were not at school told investigators that they are forced to exchange sex for money out of financial despair, ActionAid wrote.

“There are a lot of girls in my area who are going through the same situation. As for my situation, now I just hope that God will help me in this and I will get out of this safe.”

BELL


Like many other countries on the African continent, Kenya is committed to bridging the gap in exclusion from education by giving all children access by 2030. But the dispersed approach to the teen pregnancy approach – a problem before the pandemic hit – has been criticized by campaign groups such as Human Rights Watch. In July, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta ordered an investigation into growing reports of violence against women and girls, noting that teenage pregnancies increased during the pandemic.

Frustrated lawyers say that cuts in foreign aid by donor countries, such as the United Kingdom, amid a wave of Covid-induced austerity measures will have devastating effects on girls’ education and leave them without the safety net the school offers. They warn that failing to place women and girls at the center of recovery plans has a steep cost to economic growth, especially when faced with one of the deepest recessions since World War II.

A World Bank report, launched in partnership with the Malala Fund in 2018, showed that limited educational opportunities for women and girls completing high school could cost the global economy between $ 15 trillion and $ 30 trillion.

“Governments are under pressure because aid will be reduced because revenues are falling because of the economic effects of Covid and also because there is greater demand in the health sector,” said Lucia Fry, director of research and policy at the Malala Fund. said. “In some cases, not all, countries are diverting funds from education at this time of great need.”

A number of advocacy groups are calling on governments to maintain the priority they have given to education, while simultaneously looking to the international community to provide tax incentives in the form of debt reduction and emergency aid. In the longer term, they are looking at reforms in things like the international tax system, so that countries can keep more of the revenue they have for public services.

Meanwhile, teenagers like Bella need to change their expectations from a future at school to one at home.

“It was so hard for me. I miss the words to explain how I feel,” Bella said.

“Going back to school won’t be possible … and my baby will be here soon.”

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