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Women Through the COVID-19 Pandemic: Challenges, Consequences, and Resilience: Comparison
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Please note this is a comparison between Version 2 by Abigail Zou and Version 1 by Pascal L. Ghazalian.

The COVID-19 pandemic represents an unprecedented event in contemporary history, with far-reaching repercussions for the global economy and society. This article examines the economic challenges and consequences of this pandemic for women. It further explores the pandemic effects on women’s health and well-being, exacerbated by the limited access to basic healthcare and mental health resources, and it points out the challenges facing women in frontline occupations (namely, healthcare). This article also highlights the alarming surge in domestic violence and abuse against women during the pandemic, aggravated by lockdown measures and isolation from support networks. In addition, this article discusses various social and political implications of this pandemic for women, and it reveals how women demonstrated significant resilience over the pandemic-related struggles. The implications of the COVID-19 pandemic are likely to persist in the post-pandemic era as they intersect with ongoing social and economic transformations and new events/crises. At this point, it remains to be determined to what extent this pandemic has decelerated (or even reversed) the progress that was made over the past few decades in terms of reducing gender inequality and enhancing women’s social status, and to what degree women’s resilience in the face of this pandemic has mitigated its adverse effects on their economic opportunities and social positions. Nevertheless, this article aims to provide a reference for governments, women’s organizations, and policymakers in assessing the implications of this pandemic for women and in designing sustained and targeted measures to support women vis-à-vis future crises.

  • COVID-19 pandemic
  • economic challenges
  • economic consequences
  • women’s health
  • women’s well-being
  • domestic violence
  • social implications
  • women’s resilience
Before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, women had benefited from progress made in economic, social, and political domains over time [1,2,3,4,5,6][1][2][3][4][5][6]. There have been gradual de jure improvements, as illustrated through the Women, Business, and the Law (WBL) indicators (see https://wbl.worldbank.org/en/wbl (accessed on 14 May 2025)). In this context, important reforms have been realized in mobility legislation in terms of granting women equal rights to choose their place of residence and to obtain a passport; in workplace protections against discrimination and employment restrictions; in legislation guaranteeing equal pay for equal work; and in expanding rights related to entrepreneurship, marriage, and parenthood, inter alia. Complementarily, there have been de facto improvements as well, which are expressed through the continual decline of the Gender Inequality Index (GII), which basically spans through three core dimensions (namely, reproductive health, empowerment, and labour market) (see https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/thematic-composite-indices/gender-inequality-index#/indicies/GII (accessed on 14 May 2025)).
However, despite these advances, there persisted structural/systemic barriers facing women [1,2,3,4,5,6][1][2][3][4][5][6]. For example, on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, WBL scores still stood well below the benchmarks of equal legislative treatment between men and women in several countries across different dimensions, while the de facto GII measures lingered well above the equality thresholds in many regions. In several (particularly developing and least-developed) countries, women continued to experience inadequate legislation, as well as pronounced wage gaps, occupational segregation, and markedly lower employment rates compared to men [3]. Furthermore, a large share of women in developing and least-developed countries remained concentrated in the informal sector, where they encounter lacking labour protection standards, limited legal rights, and unfavourable working conditions [3]. Women have also been subject to enduring social discrimination; in many societies (particularly deeply conservative ones), prejudiced gender norms and cultural stigmas confined women to their households, consequently inhibiting their political/civic participation/contribution and academic attainment and often exposing them to domestic abuse and violence [7,8][7][8].
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated pre-existing gender inequalities and, in some cases, reversed decades of progress in the economic and social status of women and their welfare/well-being [6,9,10,11,12][6][9][10][11][12]. Women’s experiences during the pandemic were shaped not only by structural disparities in labour market force participation, income, and access to healthcare, but also by the normative social expectations related to caregiving, emotional labour, and responsibilities in the household. Women were also significantly affected by the economic and social disruptions of the crisis due to the discriminatory social structures and their predominance in the informal economy and (unpaid) care work [13]. Moreover, their higher employment shares in frontline occupations (e.g., healthcare, education, and service sectors) raised their exposure to pandemic health risks [10,11][10][11]. Women have also largely carried the burden of household responsibilities resulting from the containment measures (e.g., school closures, lockdowns, social distancing, and disruptions to public services). They endured mental and psycho-social consequences of the pandemic derived from caregiving demands, social isolation, heightened exposure to gender-based violence, and reduced access to protection services, inter alia [14,15,16,17][14][15][16][17].
Zooming out, the COVID-19 pandemic, by decelerating the pace of globalization and disrupting international demand and supply, has restrained the positive implications of global economic integration for women by slowing economic growth and reducing the inflows of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). These adverse effects could be linked to the ways in which economic growth has supported higher female enrollment in education, reduced social stigmas surrounding women’s participation in the labour market, and facilitated their transition from the agricultural sector to manufacturing and eventually to the service sector [18,19,20][18][19][20]. They could also be tied to FDI as the operations of foreign affiliates of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) often act as international vectors for diffusing gender-equality norms in business and society [21,22][21][22].
Amid those challenges, women demonstrated resilience during and after the pandemic by sustaining their roles in the household and frontline occupations [23,24][23][24] and by adapting to lockdown and social distancing through engagement in virtual networking and remote learning to advance their education and the schooling of their children [25,26][25][26]. Also, many women turned the misfortune of losing their employment during the pandemic into opportunities to start their own businesses, switch to a new occupation, and/or upgrade their digital skills [27]. They also pioneered in advocating responses to the pandemic-induced mental health and psychological issues [28] and raised their social engagement vis-à-vis the pandemic through women’s group activism and other organizations. They demonstrated community/political leadership in shaping pandemic responses, including efforts to introduce flexible work arrangements, advance Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in firms and organizations, and/or establish community-based support networks/services [29,30,31][29][30][31].
This paper conducts a comprehensive review of the worldwide implications of the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the diverse challenges faced by women and the economic, health, and social consequences they have endured. It also highlights women’s resilience during and after the pandemic. The next section presents the pandemic-induced economic challenges and their consequences for women, followed by Section 3 that examines the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on women’s health and well-being. Section 4 covers the rise in domestic abuse and violence during the pandemic, and Section 5 reviews other social and political implications of the pandemic for women. Section 6 highlights women’s resilience throughout and after the pandemic, and the final section provides concluding remarks.

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