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Abstract
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Covid-19 has highlighted the urgency of addressing violence against women and children, which reports suggest has increased during the pandemic. Often referred to as a "shadow pandemic,"1 the rise in violence over the past two years has been linked to lockdowns and other restrictions on movement put in place due to covid-19, which force women and children to remain at home with their abusers.
Violence against women and girls was already a huge global problem before the pandemic. However, for many years it was largely invisible within national and international statistics and surveillance systems. Data from just before the pandemic showed that more than 640 million women worldwide aged 15 and older have been subjected to intimate partner violence at least once in their lifetime (26% of partnered women aged 15 and older).2 Twenty two per cent of partnered women living in the "least developed countries" had experienced it in the past 12 months--substantially higher than the world average of 13%.2
For a variety of reasons, the jump in violence against women and children during covid-19 may not show up in medical records. A reduction in face-to-face appointments with doctors and health workers, for example, and restricted access to hospitals during the pandemic will have limited opportunities to record physical evidence of abuse. However, the data from other sources are overwhelming.
Eighty per cent of recent studies on trends in violence against women and children found evidence of increased violence during the covid-19 pandemic.3 Domestic violence hotlines in some countries reported a fivefold increase in calls after physical distancing and lockdown measures were introduced...
Language: en |