Devex: The pandemic takes its toll on women and girls’ mental health
“Experts are sounding the alarm about the impact of the pandemic on the mental health of women and girls in lower-income countries. … [W]omen and girls in low- and middle-income countries are facing a cluster of social and economic burdens that make them particularly vulnerable to high levels of stress, anxiety, and depression, according to research findings and feedback from global development teams on the ground…” (Smith, 10/20).

Thomson Reuters Foundation: U.N. says pandemic will slow already minuscule progress in women’s rights
“The coronavirus pandemic threatens to grind down progress toward gender equality that already was creeping along at a snail’s pace, the United Nations said on Tuesday. Gender-based violence and inequities in the workplace and political leadership are nearly as bad as they were 25 years ago, the global agency said in a report ‘The World’s Women 2020’…” (Lavietes, 10/20).

U.N. News: New U.N. gender study: Women ‘far from having an equal voice to men’
“The COVID-19 pandemic is ‘interrupting efforts’ to achieve gender equality and threatening to ‘reverse hard-won gains’ over the past decades, a senior U.N. official said on Tuesday. Introducing the 2020 edition of The World’s Women: Trends and Statistics, Liu Zhenmin, chief of the U.N.’s economic and social affairs department (DESA), said that over the last two decades, ‘attitudes of discrimination are slowly changing’ and women’s lives have improved with regard to education, early marriage, childbearing, and maternal mortality, all while progress has stagnated in other areas…” (10/20).