Women Battling 2 Epidemics- Covid-19 and Domestic Violence

By Sneha Sinha

Everyone is struggling with the pandemic since 2020. The particular period has been considered as a lost year, and we together battle against Corona. Many people lost their family, jobs and the below poverty line grade has been not earning due to lockdown but when it comes to women’s struggle its worst because they are battling with 2 epidemics, the first one is Covid-19 and the second one is Domestic Violence.

Increasing domestic violence complaints: According to the NCW (National Commission for Women), 1,463 domestic violence complaints were received during the period of 3 months from January 2021 to March 2021. If you look back to the registered domestic violence cases in the year 2019 and 2020, you will get a difference of 3,992. In the past 10 years, 2020 has the worst scenario for domestic violence.

Lockdown: National lockdown was declared on 24th March 2020. This step was taken to protect yourself from corona but when a virus stays in your home, how can you be safe? The lack of earning opportunities and personal space leads to producing mental stress, anxiety, and frightening. When others are just trying to cope up with covid-19, the women are battling against both the corona and domestic violence.

Gender Gap: In this modern era, domestic violence is one of the most concerning issues of our country. The participation of woman in the workforce is about 25% till 2020 which is 1/4th of women’s population in our country and this is one of the major reasons which enforce the gender gap. According to the UNGC (United Nations Global Compact), in 153 countries India is the only country that has more economic gender gap than the political gap.

At last, I want to say that we should take violence against women as a serious issue and an outcome of covid-19. We should advance our policy implications digitally to improve the situation.