The COVID-19 pandemic revealed crucial gaps in how insurance policies are made and who they serve. Ladies face distinct challenges which can be too usually ignored in nationwide responses. To construct resilient and equitable public well being techniques, we should begin by listening to ladies, valuing their experiences, and together with them meaningfully in policymaking. True gender-responsive policymaking isn’t just about equity, it’s about designing smarter, extra inclusive insurance policies that work for everybody.
One evening in the course of the pandemic, Nishanthi, a garment manufacturing unit employee residing in a boarding home in Katunayake, was all of the sudden informed by army officers to pack her belongings and depart with the opposite ladies. There have been 54 of them within the boarding home.
Earlier that day, two of her fellow boarders had examined constructive for COVID-19. “We thought it was simply an consciousness assembly,” she recalled. “Then they informed us to pack garments for 3 days and warned us not to withstand or depart, as army officers had surrounded the constructing. Two of our mates fainted from the shock.”
Nishanthi and the others have been first taken to Veyangoda and later transferred to the Kalutara Educating College for quarantine. She ultimately examined constructive and spent 24 days in isolation.
For girls like Nishanthi, quarantine introduced added burdens. Within the early levels of the pandemic, many quarantine centres lacked privateness, separate areas, and even fundamental services to handle menstruation. These gaps made an already hectic and horrifying expertise even tougher for girls.
Nishanthi’s expertise serves as a reminder that public coverage, significantly throughout a disaster, should replicate the varied realities that ladies and men face. Public coverage performs an important function in fixing social issues and bettering lives. Nonetheless, to make an actual distinction, it should be well timed, inclusive, and conscious of the particular wants of various teams, making certain that nobody is left behind.
That is significantly true throughout occasions of disaster. The COVID-19 pandemic didn’t simply threaten well being; it disrupted jobs, social relationships, and the each day lives of individuals. However the influence wasn’t the identical for everybody.
Ladies, specifically, have been hit laborious, they usually have been disproportionately represented in industries most affected by COVID-19, resembling meals service, retail, and leisure, whereas additionally taking over elevated caregiving duties at residence.
These added pressures made life even tougher and elevated current inequalities that ladies already confronted. In Sri Lanka, ladies within the export-oriented attire sector skilled many of those identical pressures.
In response to the disaster, the Sri Lankan authorities acted rapidly, introducing varied public well being and financial restoration measures. However have been these insurance policies really inclusive? Did they think about ladies’s lived experiences? Had been ladies meaningfully concerned in shaping the response?
To discover these questions, the Institute of Coverage Research of Sri Lanka (IPS) carried out a examine inspecting how gender was thought-about — or neglected — in Sri Lanka’s pandemic response. Nishanthi’s story is only one of many who emerged via this analysis. Drawing from interviews with a spread of stakeholders, the examine recognized key classes for extra inclusive and equitable policymaking sooner or later.
What We Discovered
Gaps in understanding gender wants. Many decision-makers acknowledged the significance of creating insurance policies that reply to the totally different wants of women and men. However not everybody noticed it as important.
Some felt that Sri Lanka had already achieved sufficient gender equality and didn’t see the necessity for particular consideration to ladies’s points in the course of the pandemic. This view neglected the actual struggles many ladies confronted and confirmed a lack of understanding about how crises can deepen current inequalities.
Ladies have been concerned — however not all the time heard. It was a constructive step to see ladies included in coverage discussions in the course of the pandemic. Nonetheless, our examine discovered that their precise affect was restricted. As a result of choices have been largely made via a centralised and top-down course of, particularly initially of the disaster, ladies’s voices didn’t all the time attain these on the prime and infrequently weren’t acted upon.
Ladies’s particular wants have been neglected in implementation. Even when insurance policies have been geared toward defending everybody, the precise rollout usually ignored ladies’s distinctive challenges. For instance, early within the pandemic, quarantine centres usually lacked services resembling menstrual hygiene provides and security measures for girls.
As one official shared, “Ladies dealing with menstruation had vital challenges… Private area was missing as everybody shared dormitories, and all services have been communal.” These gaps made the expertise much more hectic for girls.
If a gender-responsive technique had been included into coverage improvement from the outset, these conditions might have been higher anticipated and mitigated. Useful resource limitation was a considerable barrier to establishing such services, limiting the assist obtainable to ladies in the course of the pandemic and additional intensifying the challenges they encountered.
The Path Forward for Gender-Responsive Policymaking
Consciousness creation. Elevating consciousness in regards to the significance of together with gender views at each stage of policymaking is a crucial first step towards significant change. This implies difficult long-standing gender biases and serving to decision-makers see how inequality can result in totally different outcomes for women and men, particularly throughout occasions of disaster.
Consciousness could be strengthened via focused campaigns, participating academic efforts, and hands-on coaching. However consciousness alone isn’t sufficient. Actual progress requires motion: accumulating and utilizing gender-sensitive knowledge, updating outdated coverage frameworks, and committing sources to make sure insurance policies really reply to the wants of all genders.
Transfer past symbolic participation. Having ladies take part in coverage dialogue boards is a good step, however additionally it is necessary that they’ve the authority and independence to genuinely affect choices.
When ladies are solely a part of symbolic gestures, it doesn’t result in actual change. To create significant progress, we must always undertake a well-rounded method that features addressing gender socialisation, supporting profession development, making certain honest pay, selling work-life stability, and offering mentoring alternatives. These efforts are key to empowering ladies and fostering real management within the office.
We should additionally work to recognise and overcome the limitations that forestall ladies from participating absolutely in decision-making. These obstacles embody deep-rooted male-dominated concepts, restricted illustration, structural and cultural challenges, a shortage of function fashions, restrictive management types, and the invisible glass ceiling that retains ladies from reaching the best management roles.
Put money into preparedness — with ladies in thoughts. Throughout COVID-19, many gender-sensitive options — like separate services in quarantine centres — have been neglected, usually as a result of finances constraints. However failing to plan for girls’s wants could make a disaster even worse.
Future pandemic preparedness plans ought to embody sustainable funding to assist gender-responsive measures. These investments gained’t simply assist ladies — they may enhance the resilience and equity of our total public well being system.
This weblog is predicated on the examine on ‘A Participatory Examine on Enhancing the Pandemic Coverage Responses to Cut back Hostile Well being Results on Ladies Employees within the Export-Oriented Attire Trade of Sri Lanka’ carried out by the Institute of Coverage Research of Sri Lanka with the Nationwide Planning Division of Sri Lanka, and the College of Ottawa, Canada. The examine is funded beneath Ladies’s Well being and Financial Empowerment for a COVID-19 Restoration that’s Inclusive, Sustainable and Equitable (Ladies RISE), an initiative of the Worldwide Improvement Analysis Centre (IDRC), the Canadian Institutes of Well being Analysis, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Analysis Council.
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