WORLD BANK / COVID-19 IMPACT WOMEN GIRLS

STORY: WORLD BANK / COVID-19 IMPACT WOMEN GIRLS
TRT: 2:52
SOURCE: WORLD BANK GROUP
RESTRICTIONS: PLEASE CREDIT WORLD BANK GROUP
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS

DATELINE: 15 MAY 2020, WASHINGTON, DC

SHOTLIST:

1 Cutaway
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Caren Grown, Global Director for Gender, World Bank:
“Well, it turns out, actually, that the pandemic is not gender neutral, as I would say. It actually has differential impacts on men and on women and on boys and girls, as a result of a number of factors in terms of their biology and physiology, but also because of their social and economic roles in the different societies in which they live. There are - and I think therefore the responses when we think about the policy response and the sectoral response, we also have to not be gender neutral. We have to actually tailor responses to address the very different vulnerabilities, but also the very different agency roles that men and women can play.”
3. Cutaway
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Caren Grown, Global Director for Gender, World Bank:
”A lot of people have probably heard that men have higher mortality - higher male fatalities in the pandemic than female fatalities. And that's absolutely the case. And there's a lot of discussion right now in the literature about whether that's due to physiology, hormonal, other issues or whether it's due to social issues, the fact that men in many countries have higher smoking rates.”
5. Cutaway
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Caren Grown, Global Director for Gender, World Bank:
”Even though we think that mortality might be a male issue, it has consequences - consequences for women. Why? Because men earn and those households in those households where men have perished, there may need to be income earning opportunities for women or ability to access cash transfers or pensions.”
7. Cutaway
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Caren Grown, Global Director for Gender, World Bank:
”More women than men around the world are in the frontlines of the health care profession. As nurses, as physician assistants, as other frontline workers. In some countries it's as high as 85 to 90 percent. So what that means is women are at greater risk of exposure overall than men. And it turns out when you look at the data, there's higher morbidity - there's more women who have are infected in the health care sector than our men.”
9. Cutaway
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Caren Grown, Global Director for Gender, World Bank:
”Pandemics and crises put tremendous pressure on systems. And it means that services are stretched and capacity may be really thin. And so women have ongoing needs for maternal and reproductive health care. And those services may continue - may be difficult to continue in times of crisis, or it may be that with lockdowns and shutdowns, women may be unable to access to move around to get to those kinds of services.”

STORYLINE:

World Bank Global Director for Gender Caren Grown detailed the unique impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) on women and girls.

She highlighted the fact that the crisis “has differential impacts on men and on women and on boys and girls, as a result of a number of factors in terms of their biology and physiology, but also because of their social and economic roles in the different societies in which they live."

The gender expert explained that even though research suggests men may have higher mortality risks, more women than men are on the frontlines of the crisis response around the world.