Pandemic-era austerity, mobility restrictions, and surveillance gaps exacerbate systemic gender-based violence globally
Original framing: “Financial strain, lockdowns and fear of infection during disease outbreaks magnify violence against women and girls − new research” — The Conversation - Global
Meta-analyses confirm that economic shocks (e.g., job loss, inflation) increase intimate partner violence by 20-30%, with women’s unpaid labor rising by 50% during crises (UN Women, 2022). Surveillance gaps are systemic: only 41% of countries have gender-sensitive health data systems (WHO, 2021), and police reports undercount violence due to stigma and institutional bias. The 'shadow pandemic' of gender-based violence during COVID-19 was documented by over 150 studies, yet funding for prevention remains less than 0.1% of global health budgets.
The pandemic-era surge in violence against women is not an anomaly but a predictable outcome of neoliberal austerity, carceral public health, and data colonialism—a triad that has deep roots in colonial plagues, IMF structural adjustment programs, and the feminization of poverty.
Indigenous frameworks like *ayni* and *whanaungatanga* reveal how state abandonment during crises forces women to absorb unpaid labor, while trickster traditions (Hermes, Anansi) expose how 'data gaps' are engineered silences that serve extractive economies. Cross-cultural parallels from Ebola in West Africa to apartheid in Palestine show that mobility restrictions and militarized responses weaponize gendered violence as a tool of control, yet feminist green new deals and Indigenous data sovereignty offer pathways to redistribute power. The solution lies in dismantling the circuits of extraction—debt, surveillance, and care labor—that sustain this violence, replacing them with communal care systems and decolonial futures where women’s lives are not collateral damage but the foundation of resilience.