COVID-19 Global Gender Response Tracker
The COVID-19 Global Gender Response Tracker monitors responses taken by governments worldwide to tackle the pandemic, and highlights those that have integrated a gender lens. It captures two types of government responses: women’s participation in COVID-19 task forces and national policy measures taken by governments. It analyzes which of the policy measures address women’s economic and social security, including unpaid care work, the labour market and violence against women. The Tracker can provide guidance for policymakers and evidence for advocates to ensure a gender-sensitive COVID-19 policy response.
Learn about the methodology here and how to use the tracker here
Find out more about global and regional highlights from the Tracker in these factsheets
Rewatch the launch of the tracker in Arabic, English, French or Spanish
The Research Team
The Tracker is coordinated by UNDP with substantive leadership and technical contributions from UN Women. It is co-created by both entities and based on publicly available information, including media coverage, official documents, and other COVID-19 policy trackers. In some cases, information on measures was provided by UNDP and UN Women country offices. The methodological guidelines for data collection on COVID-19 Task Forces were established by Gender Inequality Research Lab (GIRL) at the University of Pittsburgh, through their ongoing partnership with UNDP on Gender Equality in Public Administration. The data were compiled by GIRL and UN Online Volunteers, with coordination by the tracker team, and validated by UNDP/UN Women with the support of country offices.
The March update has been made possible due to the valuable work of UN Volunteers.
Questions and Answers
What is the definition of gender-sensitive measures?
For the purpose of the tracker, gender-sensitive measures are defined as those that seek to directly address gendered risks and challenges caused by the COVID-19 crisis. In the current version of the tracker, these risks include: (i) violence against women and girls, (ii) women’s economic security, and (iii) unpaid care work.
- Measures to tackle violence against women are gender-sensitive by default.
- Gender-sensitive measures that support women’s economic security include: (a) social protection measures that target women or prioritize them as the main recipients of benefits; (b) labour market measures aimed at improving women’s access to paid work and trainings; and (c) fiscal and economic measures that channel support to femaledominated sectors of the economy.
- Gender-sensitive measures that address unpaid care include: (a) social protection measures that support women and men with care responsibilities or improve services for populations with care needs; and (b) labour market measures that help female and male workers with care responsibilities to cope with the rising demand for unpaid care.
Further details are available in the methodological note here.
What is the definition of a COVID-19 task force?
A COVID-19 task force is any institution (temporary or permanent) that was created by the national government to lead the response to the pandemic across any sector of public life (e.g. public health, economic recovery, enforcement). National bodies that existed prior to COVID-19 but are leading national response efforts are not included in this analysis. International or subnational task forces are also excluded. Further details can be found in the methodological note here.
I don’t see task forces or gender-sensitive measures for my country. How can I find them?
If gender-sensitive measures or COVID-19 task forces for your country are missing in the tracker, it means that the tracker hasn’t identified such measures based on publicly available information. If you have this information, you are welcome to send it to covid.gender.helpdesk@undp.org.
How can the data provided in the tracker contribute to more gender-sensitive response and recovery?
The tracker identifies clear policy gaps in the global response to COVID-19, showing the disproportionate policy response to women’s economic security and unpaid care work. This suggests that countries need to take firm action in social protection, labour market and fiscal and economic policies to fulfil women’s needs and rights. The tracker also offers a wealth of good practices and country examples of what has been done to address gender-differentiated risks of COVID-19. This provides an evidence base on what countries can do to build forward better prioritizing gender equality in their response and recovery efforts.
National and local governments continue to change their policies due to the pandemic. How do you ensure that the tracker captures this information?
The tracker a living database with more measures to be added, updated and validated across existing and new policy categories.
Does the tracker provide information on initiatives conducted by UN agencies, civil society and other organizations?
The tracker focuses on responses that are taken by governments and doesn’t aim to cover initiatives implemented by other stakeholders including UN agencies and non-governmental organizations. Nonetheless, measures that have been supported by the UN or other organizations are included in the tracker as long as they have been led by governments.
Does the tracker distinguish between measures or task forces which are entirely new and have been established since the pandemic emerged and those which were previously in place but have been adapted in response to COVID-19?
The tracker focuses on measures and task forces that have been established in response to COVID-19. For policy measures, these include new measures (such as cash for care) and those which have been adapted or scaled up in the COVID-19 context (such as expansion of social protection coverage, waiving of cash transfer conditionalities, or adaptation of existing services for survivors of gender-based violence to continue functioning during the pandemic). For task forces, these include new sub-committees within pre-existing public health institutions or re-activated emergency response teams.
Do you have data on gender-sensitive measures for countries in fragile and conflict-affected settings?
The tracker classifies countries based on fragility status and includes relevant data where available. You can find disaggregated information on policy measures in countries in fragile and conflict-affected settings under regional analysis on the second page of the tracker.
Is the data disaggregated by age, region, or sector?
The tracker doesn’t disaggregate data by age, region, or sector (partly due to the limited availability of such data in policy responses to COVID-19), but the tracker includes different measures that target women at different stages of the life cycle, including young girls and older women. It also includes some gender-sensitive responses taken across individual regions or sectors. This information can be found by a relevant key word search in the policy details tab of the tracker.
Are there markers that are tracking sexual and gender-based violence and other forms of violence and economic deprivation of LGBTIQ people?
While the tracker focuses on measures to prevent violence against women and girls, it does include measures that also target LGBTIQ populations. This is noted in the policy details of each measure and is an aspect that can be assessed systematically in future iterations of the tracker.
What other policy measures are you planning to include, and when?
We plan to expand the tracker and include more policy dimensions, including green economy, digitalization, and gender-responsive budgeting. Updates are expected to be conducted quarterly. Please check the tracker page for further details.
Does the tracker look into funding allocated to gender-sensitive plans and policies?
We plan to include and analyze gender-responsive budgeting in the following phases of the tracker development.
For more information or feedback to improve the Tracker, please contact:
covid.gender.helpdesk@undp.org.
