Gates Funding Seeks to Advance Policies for Women’s Equity in the Post-Pandemic World

A worker in Beawar, India conducts a door-to-door survey to monitor the spread of COVID-19. Sumit Saraswat/shutterstock

A worker in Beawar, India conducts a door-to-door survey to monitor the spread of COVID-19. Sumit Saraswat/shutterstock

The pandemic has impacted men and women differently. 

Early data shows that women are bearing the brunt of it in terms of economic, health and social outcomes, especially in low- and middle-income countries. The Malala Fund estimates that 20 million secondary-school-aged girls will never return to their classrooms. Data gleaned from 26,000 businesses in more than 50 countries show that women were more likely to close their businesses. And the strain on healthcare systems in Sierra Leone alone may result in 100,000 additional maternal deaths. 

But where many see staggering setbacks, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation sees opportunities in the post-pandemic world, beginning at the policy level. Recently, it granted $1.45 million to put women at the center of conversations on an inclusive recovery. Funding will help launch the COVID-19 Gender and Development Initiative at the Center for Global Development, a new research hub to promote gender equality in low- and middle-income countries.

From essential to sidelined

Numbers prove that the virus put a disproportionate number of women on the front lines with one hand, while leaving them behind with the other. Seventy percent of the world’s health workers are women. In the U.S., one in three women hold jobs that are considered essential, from keeping retail engines humming to social services. 

Yet as the pandemic rages on, there are clear signs of widening economic inequities, with some parts of the world witnessing a disturbing slide from formal to informal employment sectors, bottoming out at subsistence farming. 

Gates has entrusted the Center for Global Development (CGD)—a U.K.- and U.S.-based nonprofit think tank funded by foundations, corporations, governments and individuals—with deepening the understanding of the gendered impacts of COVID through research and outreach. CGD has driven evidence-based policies forward with top development decision-makers for two decades. Within CGD, the gender and equality discipline sits alongside core work in education, global health and migration policy, and government development. 

Gates, which prioritizes both global health and gender equity in its grantmaking, has been a major funder of CGD for over a decade, having granted more than $40 million to the organization in the past five years alone, according to the foundation’s grants database. Past funding has supported its work on issues like preventing malaria, financial services for the poor, family planning and empowering women and girls. 

Megan O’Donnell, CGD’s deputy director for gender, says that “though the COVID-19 pandemic itself has been disastrous for global health and the global economy, this moment presents a major opportunity for policymakers across the globe to improve the opportunities of women and girls worldwide.”

That will mean casting a wide net. “Promoting gender equality can’t begin and end with a focus on middle-class women in high-income countries,” O’Donnell continues, “and it can’t just be policymakers with the word ‘gender’ or ‘women’ in their titles who take on this challenge; it has to be health ministers, labor ministers, finance ministers, and everyone else involved in global and national recovery efforts.”

Under a microscope

To determine the best pathways to inclusivity, researchers will put three areas under a microscope, compiling data on economic development, health, and social protection policies. After analyzing potential strategies, CGD will convene policymakers to relay recommendations. 

O’Donnell says the beginning analysis will focus on multilateral development banks like the World Bank, as well as other regional responders that CGD expects to play a central role in providing support as “a lot of bilateral donors turn inward to deal with domestic challenges.” Down the line, the scope will widen to include both bilateral donors and low- and middle-income countries. 

Asked about timing, O’Donnell reports that CGD expects to present initial recommendations to target audiences by spring. Progress on implementation will then be tracked for at least the next year, including through the U.N. Women Generation Equality Forum

A common thread of equity

Inclusivity is a running theme in Gates’ response to COVID, which now tops $1.75 billion. The foundation’s long and deep experience with diseases like Ebola informs the belief that outbreaks impact women and girls differently, and made fair access to medical interventions part of its “origin story.”

In March, Gates provided $50 million in seed funding to the COVID-19 Accelerator, which has attracted investments totaling nearly $300 million from partners including  Wellcome, Mastercard, the U.K. government and Alwaleed Philanthropies. Among its goals is providing access to testing, treatments and vaccines for the most marginalized through the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator

On the vaccine front, Gates made commitments totaling $156 million to Gavi’s COVAX Advance Market Commitment to ensure that vaccines are accessible and affordable in 92 low- and middle-income countries.  

Now that multiple vaccines are approved and pending, the foundation recently upped its equity response. In early December, it committed an additional $250 million to speed delivery to “the majority of human beings that live in low- and middle-income nations” where only 20% of populations are in line for coverage. 

Women’s equity is embedded in all of Gates’ work: “It has become clear that the undervaluing of women and girls is at the root of every problem we are working to solve,” its website states. Tactics include breaking down structural barriers to economic opportunities, empowering women to make decisions in their own lives, and collecting and employing data on gender issues to advance change at the policy level.

One of the pandemic’s looming questions is what we’ll see on the other side, as broken systems come back to life. O’Donnell urges immediate action, saying, “Policymakers have a chance right now to put women at the center of recovery efforts and fix long-standing inequalities.”