The Standing Together for Nutrition Consortium has released a sobering new policy brief on the ways COVID-19 is disproportionately exacerbating nutrition challenges faced by women and girls around the world. Pandemic lockdowns and containment measures created four compounding crises that continue to adversely impact women and girls’ nutrition: increased poverty, increased food insecurity, reduced access to health services, and extensive school closures.
This policy brief is calling for COVID-19 response and recovery efforts to be explicitly gender-responsive in their design, scope and delivery. Integrating and scaling up women’s nutrition and gender empowering actions in sectoral nutrition plans is urgently needed to offset COVID-19’s harmful impacts on women and girls’ nutrition, health, and human capital.
