COVID-19 and gender-biased violence: current knowledge, gaps, and implications for public policy

On a global scale, 1 in 3 women experience physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime, and women of disadvantaged backgrounds are at an even higher risk. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, data have shown that violence against women (VAW) has intensified. In this paper, we review an incipient but rapidly growing literature that evaluates the effects of stay-at-home measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19 on VAW. We focus on low and middle-income countries and classify existing studies into three categories according to the quality of the data used and the reliability of the identification strategies: not causal, less causal, and causal. Overall, the existing literature offers mixed evidence about the VAW effects of stay-at-home measures, although increases in VAW have been more frequently observed where stay-at-home measures were stricter. Important reasons for the mixed evidence found in the literature seem to be the different types of violence analyzed (physical, sexual, psychological, or economic) and the corresponding difficulties in reporting. The main methodological challenges for this literature are data availability and the reliability of the methods employed to separate the effects of social isolation on VAW from those VAW effects associated with the income and emotional shocks from the COVID-19 pandemic. Innovative methods and data can help to improve our understanding and design better policy responses to this major social and public health challenge.