Women and girls have been at the fore-front of the response to the COVID-19 crisis, either working at home taking care of their family’s and community’s daily needs doing domestic labour and providing essential care to children, the elderly, the sick; and other dependants; or by working on the health care system as nurses, midwives, and community health workers. Women worldwide have performed work of crucial importance to ensure the sustainability of life in the midst of the pandemic.

Yet, despite the vital role that women have played in the immediate response to the crisis, they have also been the most disproportionately affected by the compounded effects of the pandemic and pre-existing intersectional conditions of gender inequality. Harmful gender roles and stereotypes persistent in most societies expect women and girls to perform the bulk of unpaid or underpaid care work. These care burdens, which previous the pandemic had already severely impacted women’s fundamental rights, have increased dramatically in the context of COVID-19 due to school closures and overwhelmed health systems, which have shifted significant care workloads into households, and subsequently, into women and girls. The pandemic has not only exposed but exacerbated, in unprecedented ways, the unjust organization of care systems.

In this context, the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights made an oral statement in the Annual full-day discussion on the human rights of women entitled: “COVID-19 and women’s rights” at the 44th Session of the UN Human Rights Council, to highlight the need for States to take decisive steps to avoid rolling back hard fought gains for women’s equal rights and advance in the recognition, reduction, and redistribution of care work as key component of a just and gender- responsive recovery post- COVID-19.