What The Hell America!

Five years after COVID-19 began, its most devastating impacts on women and girls in the Global South persist—demanding urgent action from global leaders, donors and institutions.

Five years ago, the world was upended by the COVID-19 pandemic—a crisis that transcended borders, affecting every facet of our lives. Today, while much of the world has moved on, the scars remain deeply etched in the lives of women and girls in the Global South. The crisis for us has not ended; it has merely been pushed into the shadows. As we mark World Health Day on April 7, it is imperative to confront the ongoing struggles of women and girls in the Global South and demand urgent action.

The pandemic did not create the inequalities that define our world, but it deepened them in ways we are still struggling to quantify and recover from five years later. The world’s most vulnerable women and girls have borne the brunt of COVID-19’s political, economic and social fallout. This “shadow pandemic” has played out in ways that remain invisible to some, but are impossible to ignore for those of us living and working in affected communities. Gender-based violence, economic hardship and lost opportunities for women and girls continue to persist, creating barriers to gender equity that urgently require global attention.

Lockdowns and isolation triggered a surge in sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), trapping women and girls in unsafe environments where they were vulnerable to abuse. In Kenya, for example, calls for help against domestic violence jumped by 34 percent in the first three weeks of the national curfew. But the harm did not end when restrictions were lifted. The trauma of that time continues to disrupt education, economic stability and the futures of countless survivors, many of whom still lack access to the support they need to heal.  

At the same time, teenage pregnancies skyrocketed. The number of children born to teen mothers in South Africa’s most populous province jumped 60 percent between the onset of the pandemic and August 2021. By October 2021, pregnancies among schoolgirls in Uganda had risen by 30 percent. In Kenya, high school girls who remained out of school for just six months due to the lockdown were twice as likely to become pregnant and three times as likely to drop out of school permanently compared to those who had graduated before the pandemic. For too many girls, pregnancy meant an abrupt end to their education and the beginning of a lifetime of limited opportunities.

The pandemic also fueled a surge in child marriage. Economic desperation drove families to marry off their daughters, often in exchange for a dowry that could ease financial burdens caused by pandemic job loss. And with limited access to reproductive healthcare, girls faced a devastating cycle of teen pregnancy and forced marriage. An estimated 10 million more girls are at risk of becoming child brides by 2030 due to the lingering effects of COVID-19. Like with pregnancy, child marriage leads to higher levels of school dropout, leaving girls with fewer economic opportunities and often trapping them in generational cycles of poverty.

The economic toll of the pandemic on women has been staggering. In 2021, UN Women reported a 9 percent rise in the poverty rate for women, reversing years of progress. By 2030, for every 100 men aged 25 to 34 living in extreme poverty, there will be 121 women. McKinsey & Company reported that if we do not address the negative impact of COVID-19 on women, global GDP will be $1 trillion lower than it would have been had the pandemic affected men and women in their work equally. 

Vulnerable communities that already faced deep-seated inequalities before COVID-19 are still feeling the worst effects today. But as I attempt to convey the severity, another challenge we face becomes apparent: the lack of comprehensive, longitudinal data to fully grasp the pandemic’s long-term impacts on women and girls in the Global South. While those of us working on the ground witness these struggles daily, expressing their full gravity to the world remains difficult without robust, macro-level research.

Five years on, we still do not know the full extent of the pandemic’s impact on education, economic stability, healthcare access and gender equity. Until we prioritize this research, we risk underestimating the depth of the crisis and thus a potential failure to address its consequences effectively.

The recent cuts to U.S. global health and foreign aid funding compound all of these challenges. The U.S. government, historically one of the largest donors to health initiatives in low- and middle-income countries, provided 30 percent of all health assistance, amounting to $8.3 billion annually in the last few years. However, recent funding cuts under the new administration have severely strained health programs in the Global South, further exacerbating the crisis for women and girls.

As world leaders gather this year on prestigious global stages—from the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in New York to the World Economic Forum in Davos—many are discussing how to meet the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals by the 2030 deadline looming in just five years’ time. Yet few acknowledge that the Global South is still facing far-reaching setbacks across all 17 goals as a result of the pandemic. Without targeted, sustained interventions, these goals will remain out of reach and the Global South will fall further behind the rest of the world.

Governments, donors and global institutions must commit to sustained research and funding for programs that protect and empower the most marginalized communities among us. Without continued investment, the crisis will deepen, and hard-won gains for gender equality will continue to slip through our fingers.

Women-led and community-based movements are essential to addressing the shadow pandemic. Organizations like my own, Kakenya’s Dream, understand the unique cultural and contextual intricacies of these challenges in ways that the Global North cannot. Investing in grassroots solutions is not just a moral imperative—it is the most effective way to drive real, lasting change.

The world may have moved on, but for millions of women and girls, the pandemic’s consequences are still shaping their daily lives. We must do more to ensure that they are not left behind in our collective recovery.