In April, UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged the world to “put women and girls at the centre of recovery efforts” as the UN released a report highlighting how the pandemic could reverse the limited progress made on gender equality worldwide.

Unfortunately, it seems his advice has largely been ignored, with much of the world failing to adequately address the fallout from COVID-19 on women and girls.

That’s according to the just released United Nations’ COVID-19 Global Gender Response tracker, monitoring 2500 policy measures across 206 countries to apply a gender lens across three policy areas: those that tackle violence against women, those that support unpaid care, and those that strengthen women’s economic security.

The UN found 42 countries had no gender-sensitive measure in place at all, and only 25 have at least 1 measure in all 3 areas.  

The assessment of Australia’s COVID-19 response found that we have introduced measures to address violence against women and support unpaid care, but none addressing women’s economic security.