This article is written by Nihal Said, Project Officer at Plan International and Apolitical Insider Fellow. This article has been edited by Camille Nebout, Apolitical Insider Fellow and economic analyst in the French Treasury.

I take this space as a place to reflect on privilege during the Covid-19 pandemic — reflecting on the harmful effects this pandemic has had on one of the most vulnerable populations; adolescent girls.

In this article, I want to share some of the impacts I came across as part of my work as well as some of the data I have come across. I work for a non-profit organisation concerned with the urgency of action to alleviate the vulnerability and disadvantage of adolescent girls in the most affected countries and communities. I don’t attempt to represent or carefully articulate these impacts, but to analyse their effects within the context of power, privilege and priorities.

The girls who grow up in the pandemic

When the number of Covid-19 cases grew quickly, and began to impact both the most developed and developing countries alike, we were concerned that girls and young women would be left behind in the emergency response efforts.

This crisis has been classified as a health emergency with unprecedented economic impact, but with little attention to the deeper social impacts of the pandemic and the response measures. Many have warned that the framing of the Covid-19 response using words such as “fighting”, “ war on Covid”, “Shielding” to name just a few of the words used by decision makers worldwide reflects a war-centric narrative. This narrative, usually used by  male leaders, devising and directing resources to the response through war tactics, risks deepening gender inequities and increasing the harm on women and adolescent girls.

Close to 300 million women and girls’ menstrual hygiene management needs are unmet due to pervasive inequality, discriminatory social norms, cultural taboos, poverty and lack of basic services; and this number is expected to rise with the supply chain shortages and economic impacts of Covid-19

The fact that women are over-represented in health and care work (70%) and that women account for the the most affected front liners became an afterthought. Adolescent girls who were already disadvantaged in their communities became the target for more neglect, increased child marriage incidence, sexual exploitation, female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) and school dropouts.

In March 2020, UNESCO reported that Covid-19 forced more than 743 million girls out of school globally, including 111 million girls in the world’s least developed countries. Every year, an estimated 21 million girls aged 15-19 years in developing regions become pregnant, close to 50% of these pregnancies are unintended, and adolescent girls face barriers to accessing sexual and reproductive health care, including contraceptives and safe abortion. These barriers are expected to get worse as a result of Covid-19 due to the disruption of health services.

According to UNICEF, 1.8 billion girls, women and gender non-binary people menstruate, yet millions across the world cannot manage their monthly cycle in a dignified, healthy way. Close to 300 million women and girls’ menstrual hygiene management needs are unmet due to pervasive inequality, discriminatory social norms, cultural taboos, poverty and lack of basic services; and this number is expected to rise with the supply chain shortages and economic impacts of Covid-19.

We need to put our money where our mouth is

This accounts for just a tiny fraction of the data that has been published that underscores how women and girls are impacted by this crisis.

It falls on all of us to support UN agencies and NGOs to help realise their pledges to governments, political leaders, donors and doctors to continue to provide urgent and essential sexual and reproductive health services, refrain from defunding legal abortion services for women and girls, refrain from barring women entrepreneurs from relief schemes, and not rely only on remote education due to existing gender and age divides in the least privileged communities.

Yet we are not sure if these recommendations, calls to action and evidence is affecting local response decisions as surely as the power of businessmen and political leaders who call for lifting lockdown restrictions motivated by an economic response. Recently,  Devex, a media platform for the international development community, started compiling funding data and analyses on Covid-19 response priorities for member states, UN agencies, private sector and philanthropic foundations. I did some topline analysis of the data published on Devex Covid-19 funding priorities data and found that a tiny fraction 0.001% of the available funding is dedicated to gender and adolescent girls issues out of the total $20.3 trillion to the fight against Covid-19. This staggering lack of prioritisation to the impact of Covid-19 on women and in particular young women and girls is shocking and requires more attention.

Adolescent girls’ feelings and distress around schools’ closure is evident from the GAGE study; they feel they lost their autonomy, opportunities for career development and the little window of mobility they gain when going to school

Many global health organisations have already reported that health systems priorities in the response exhibited power and privilege dynamics and failed to address fault lines of gender and adolescent vulnerability.

Why is this issue urgent now? Besides the rights narrative to why it’s a moral obligation of states to consider the protection, wellbeing and agency of those most left behind, many actors alerted the devastating impacts of Covid-19 response policies on adolescent girls in specific.

No girls should lose out because of their gender

I came across some powerful research reflecting the voices of adolescent girls in this crisis by the cross-country Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE) participatory research to capture the voices of adolescents in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Gaza and Jordan, regarding their perceptions and experiences of life under the emerging Covid-19 threat.

The study revealed married adolescent girls’ limited information about Covid-19 and how to protect themselves from the virus. The devastating effect of the lockdown restrictions on their livelihoods, education continuity, and the social and economic resilience of their families is pushing them to marrying off their daughters at a young age, practising female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C)  at the time of governance disruption and burdening them with care work.

Governments and donors need to assess how power and privilege affect their spending, especially at the times of crisis

Adolescent girls’ feelings and distress around schools’ closure is evident from the GAGE study; they feel they lost their autonomy, opportunities for career development and the little window of mobility they gain when going to school. _“_I feel like a loser because school is closed; I lost my sessions, and I lost my teachers and friends” (adolescent girl in Gaza City). Even when remote and online education opportunities are available, adolescent girls either can’t access these services due to the age and gender divide or; experience difficulty in learning the lessons with minimal guidance and mentoring from teachers.

These feelings of distress, fear, and anxiety expressed by adolescent girls in these disadvantaged situations cannot be ignored when responding to a crisis of this magnitude. Considerations around the interplay of power, privilege and priorities have never been more urgent either within the non-profit sector or within governments. Governments and donors need to assess how power and privilege affect their spending, especially at the times of crisis. When the economic response constitutes more than 50% of the available Covid-19 funding then this is a crisis for women and girls especially in societies where women are more likely to be unemployed or over represented in the care sector. Also, this response may bear no benefit for girls who have lost their education opportunities and cannot access the internet and benefit from remote learning, compared to their male peers.

At this time of social movement and global health response, adolescent girls are not supposed to be the ones most affected by a narrative and action skewed towards reinforcing male power and privilege. — Nihal Said

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