UN Women: Covid-19 is 'most discriminatory crisis' for women

The head of UN Women called the Covid-19 pandemic “the most discriminatory crisis” that women and girls have ever experienced and  pointing to women losing jobs far more often than men, a “shadow pandemic” of domestic violence, and 47 million more women being pushed into living on less than $1.90 a day this year. Emerging from the pandemic,  Head UN Women,Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said the world also faces more orphans and child-headed homes, an increase in child marriage, 59 percent of women reporting having to spend more time on domestic work since the pandemic began, and a digital gender gap leaving many women unprepared for the future.

She spoke at the opening of the annual meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women whose theme this year is on women's participation and decision-making in public life and combatting violence against women and girls. Mlambo-Ngcuka, the executive director of the UN women’s agency, said the World Health Organization’s latest report shows that the highest rates of intimate partner violence in the past 12 months -- 16% -- was against young women aged 15 to 24. A report for the commission’s session also underlined that “violence against women in public life is a major deterrent to their political participation, and affects women of all ages and ranks, in every part of the world,” she said.