Gendered Impacts of COVID-19 Mobility Restrictions

The month of March presents an opportunity to celebrate both International Women’s Day (March 8th) and for many, Women’s History Month, signaling a call to action for accelerating gender parity. In a year that has been marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, understanding the roles that women have played and how they have been impacted in this context is necessary to answer this call. 

Gender has been an important variable in understanding the differing impacts that COVID-19 mobility restrictions have had on different population groups, globally. Though it is often overlooked, there is substantial evidence to suggest that health emergencies tend to disproportionately affect women and girls, particularly in humanitarian contexts. In addition to collecting information on the numbers and types of COVID-19 restrictions creating barriers, as well as the population categories affected by COVID-19 related restrictions, IOM’s Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) has also included approaches which increase understanding around some of the resulting impacts on women and girls. To understand the impacts of COVID-19 on the movement or mobility of people, DTM, in collaboration with other IOM divisions has systematically collected data and produced reports on the impacts of COVID-19 on Mobility Restrictions, Points of Entry and Key Locations of Internal Mobility, Impact on Migrants, Internally Displaced Persons at the global, regional and country level. Through its various data collection initiatives focused on mobility (or lack of) in the pandemic, DTM data has highlighted two areas of concern which have had notable impacts on women, health and livelihoods.