Gendered Impact of Covid 19 in South Africa

Gendered Impact of Covid 19 in South Africa

Webinar on the Gendered Impact of Covid-19 | September 2021

On the 5th of March 2020, South Africa reported its first confirmed case of COVID-19 and has since experienced 3 waves. The pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing inequalities both from a class, race and gendered perspective. This webinar seeks to bring together speakers who will provide an evidence based and feminist analysis of the pandemic that will enable the audience to reflect on the numerous ways it interacts with gender. Gender and vulnerability to disease have historically always been interconnected.

Moreover, response measures to outbreaks are not only gendered but they also have ong-term gendered effects. South Africa’s ongoing battle with HIV/AIDS for example, has illustrated that during a health crisis, women are often more vulnerable to infection and face numerous challenges to access health care due to their positionality as women. Globally, researchers have identified that as a result of COVID-19 and the hard lockdowns around the world, there have been dire consequences on the lives of women such as, but not limited to, increased domestic abuse and intimate partner violence and long-term negative consequences to women’s livelihoods.

This means that the pandemic has had a myriad of consequences that has also deepened economic inequalities between men and women due to job losses that have significantly affected women and the widening of unpaid care work. This is an effect of neoliberal globalisation wherein capitalism thrives on underpaid or unpaid work, most of which is gendered.

The intended outcome of this webinar is to firstly illustrate that equity is a central issue in public health and that there is an inescapable link between poverty, the feminization of poverty and access to health care, particularly in the South African context. This webinar furthermore, seeks to build systems of solidarity among affected marginalised groups as a result of the pandemic.

Panelists are:

• Dr Lauren Paramoer – University of Cape Town
• Tshegofatso Putu – Development Economist and current Kader Asmal Fellow at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
• Masana Ndinga-Kanga – Programme Director, Sonke Gender Justice
• Facilitated by Nthabeleng Morake – Senior Fellow at Atlantic Fellowship for Health Equity

A webinar by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung and the Alternative Information and Development Centre