How is the coronavirus affecting women? Part Three

May 21, 2020 Lauren Foley

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes

Welcome back to the third part in this series. I don’t know if I should be happy that there has to be so many parts. This was meant to be the final one but you can expect a part four as I ended up writing a lot in this one. Parts one and two can be read here and here respectively. For this post, I want to note that some of these issues may seem far removed from you but trust me, they’re not. Firstly, if there is a woman or a girl in a seemingly different situation to you but being treated badly because of her gender, that means we have not achieved gender equality. That means that at any moment, any of the rights that you have because of your status and privilege could also be taken away from you and you could be in that girl’s situation. These are our issues too. But secondly and more importantly, if you are lucky like me, chances are you will never even come close to being affected by these issues and so, we should care just for the sake of caring. These topics are extremely complex and I am only touching on them on a surface level. I am mainly discussing the current repercussions without going too much into the cultural and societal reasons why these issues occur in the first place. So, in this post, I will discuss issues facing migrant women seeking asylum right now in Ireland. I will discuss Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and child marriage. And I will discuss the racism and Islamophobia that the pandemic has exposed even further.

Migrant Women Seeking Asylum:

I will talk about migrant women in the Direct Provision (DP) system in Ireland but much of this could be said for migrant women and those seeking asylum across the globe. I could write a whole post on DP alone but I will try to keep it brief. DP started in 1999 as a means for housing asylum seekers. Designed as a temporary base for six months, this accommodation system holds families in isolated areas with little or no access to basic services for years. Parents have reported spending a minimum of three years in deplorable conditions; with whole families or complete strangers in one room, including children, and individuals sleeping on mattresses. This causes long-term damage to health, educationally disadvantages children and adults, and isolates asylum seekers from the Irish community. This is compounding the damage already experienced by asylum seekers who may have fled dangerous conditions such as war, genocide or persecution.[i] An insight into what it’s like to live in DP can be viewed here. Of course, many of these issues affect migrant men as well. During the pandemic, DP has been getting, rightfully so in my opinion, a lot of negative attention due to its ill-treatment of its ‘residents.’ There have been several outbreaks of COVID-19 in DP centres.[ii] As with all the issues I’ve spoken about, problems already existed and they are now being exacerbated. There are many women who may not speak English. I recently watched a webinar with a resident of DP who spoke about one woman who was forced to move centres all of a sudden with her baby. The baby had nappy rash and was crying all the time. Because they live in such close quarters, the people in the room next to her were banging on the walls all throughout the night. Adults living in DP are given an allowance of just €19.10 per week and €15.60 per week per child. She does not have the money to properly care for her child. There is no money for proper cleaning supplies. Any woman suffering domestic violence cannot leave because of the fact that she is in DP and now on top of that because of restrictions on movement. There were already reports before this of women being “pushed into prostitution.”[iii] It is said that many women, and in some cases children, are offered money for sex by staff, other residents who may be pimps grooming them and neighbours from local towns. And the women rarely want to speak up for fear of being punished by the people running the centres. As I said, I could go on but I won’t. There are hundreds of issues with DP for both men and women and the pandemic is showing the entire country what an unsuitable arrangement DP is.

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM):

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), Female genital mutilation (FGM) involves the partial or total removal of external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. The practice has no health benefits for girls and women. FGM can cause severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later cysts, infections, as well as complications in childbirth and increased risk of newborn deaths.[iv] More than 200 million girls and women alive today have been cut all over the world. FGM is a unique topic during the pandemic as there are several knock-on effects, some which could simultaneously be deemed positive as well as negative. In terms of apparent positives, due to the restrictions on travel, this may mean that it’s not physically possible to get to a girl to have her cut, saving her the trauma in the present moment. Furthermore, due to bans on large gatherings, some ritual ceremonies where cutting may have taken place are also being postponed. There have been reports that FGM is slowing down in India due to a lack of access to people who do the cutting. However, these are all just temporary situations.

We know that during the Ebola outbreak in 2014, FGM in Sierra Leone was outlawed, ironically not because FGM is itself dangerous but to stop the transmission of the virus. Once the epidemic was over, it was a return to ‘business as usual.’[v] Moreover, more and more cutting has gone into secrecy even more so than usual due to the restrictions on movement. In Ireland alone, it is said that at least 1,632 girls are at high risk of FGM.[vi] Often times, girls are taken out of the country to have FGM performed on them but this may have changed now. Furthermore, there is less medical help if it does happen because of the medical attention and resources being given to the virus. Shelters are also either closed or may send away any new cases because of the risk that a girl who has been cut may also have the virus. Sensitisation and education on the issue has also stopped because activists and awareness raisers on the ground cannot go into schools and hold public gatherings etc. We, who are fortunate enough, may have moved our work onto Zoom and the virtual world but that is not an option for many tribes and communities where FGM is practised, meaning there is very little hope of getting information to these communities. There is also the risk that due to the decline in employment due to the virus, reformed cutters may go back into the ‘business’ because they have lost their livelihood.

According to Plan International, cutting in Somalia has skyrocketed during the current pandemic as cutters are going “door to door.”[vii] Funding aimed at advancing the world’s effort to end FGM is also shrinking right now as funds go towards ending the pandemic. It was and still is the UN’s goal to end FGM by 2030[viii] but now the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has warned that the pandemic could lead to an extra two million girls worldwide being cut in the next decade, which could have been prevented, as the crisis stymies global efforts to end the practice.[ix] A welcome change during this crisis is that Sudan recently just banned FGM[x] but this will mean very little if there are no funds and possibilities for work to be done on the ground. What needs to happen now is that FGM must be included in any gender based violence responses to COVID-19. And as always, we need to be careful about the language we use when talking about FGM. We won’t get anywhere by calling the practice and the affected communities ‘barbaric.’ We will get somewhere by acknowledging the societal and cultural reasons why it’s practised whilst also acknowledging that it is indeed harmful despite some good intentions of the members of these communities. More information on the current challenges, opportunities, solutions and potential actions to combat it can be found here.

Child Marriage:

Globally, 1 in 5 women (650 million) were married before their 18th birthday.[xi] Child marriage occurs all over the world, most notably in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa but also in the US and Europe due to loopholes and exceptions. For extremely similar reasons as FGM, child marriage is a major issue right now. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) anticipates that an additional 13 million child marriages will take place that otherwise would not have occurred between 2020 and 2030.[xii] And these two issues are inextricably linked as often, FGM is a precursor to child, early and forced marriage and if FGM is happening in secret, you can be sure child marriage is too. Planned interventions and education on this matter are not occurring for the same reasons it’s not happening for the issue of FGM – social distancing, closed schools etc. But to add serious insult to injury, in addition to reducing the efficacy and reach of such planned interventions, the pandemic is expected to cause a severe worldwide economic recession. This economic downturn will likely have a large impact on poverty levels in low-income countries where child marriage is most prevalent. Because poverty is a key driver of child marriage, these economic impacts are anticipated to increase rates of child marriage in vulnerable communities.[xiii] And similarly to many women’s issues, with funds being diverted to the pandemic, this issue may fall by the wayside. As always, it is extremely important to keep child marriage and the horrific knock-on effects it has in terms of lack of access to education, maternal death etc. at the forefront of any policy responses to the pandemic.

Racism and Islamophobia:

One issue that has, thankfully, started to be spoken about is the absolute hypocrisy and double standards (read: racism and Islamophobia) of the French government in particular right now. Their thinly veiled (pardon the pun) racism has become extremely apparent because as it stands, a Muslim woman wearing a covering can be fined €150 while simultaneously being fined €135 for not wearing what they deem to be an acceptable face mask. This means that a woman could have her face completely covered and still be faced with a double fine of €285.[xiv] It means that if an observant Muslim woman wanted to get on the Paris Metro, she would be required to remove her burqa and replace it with a mask. I really would love to know what conversations are happening right now in France and whether anyone is asking themselves have they messed up. It just goes to show that they don’t mind face coverings when it’s for reasons that they deem essential despite them previously being banned in the name of “protecting national security” and “liberating women in a secular society.” Their previous disregard for others’ wishes to cover themselves as they see fit definitely wouldn’t have anything to do with the French government disapproving of a certain religion where coverings are prevalent, now would it? But it’s OK to cover up now as long as it’s in the name of stopping the spread of the coronavirus. Fatima Khemilat, a fellow at the Political Science Institute of Aix-en-Provence, said that perhaps the requirement to wear a mask will give the rest of French society a glimpse of how it can feel to be a Muslim woman in a country that polices what can be worn and where.[xv]

Places like India have also seen a spike in institutionalised Islamophobia with many members of the country's 200 million-strong Muslim community having repeatedly been accused of being "super spreaders" of coronavirus both by the media and the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after a Muslim religious gathering in New Delhi in late March allegedly led to a rise in the number of coronavirus cases in the city.[xvi] A politician from the BJP dubbed the gathering "corona terrorism", and called for Muslims who attend mosques amid the pandemic to be "punished like terrorists". "Corona jihad" started trending on social media and many Muslims, including volunteers distributing relief material, faced physical and verbal attacks. A very detailed article on this can be read here.

As with essentially every issue that I’ve mentioned throughout this series, many of these issues were already existing and the crisis exacerbated them. In a way, I’m grateful that more attention is being drawn to these issues but, of course, I am not grateful for how and why that attention is needed. If you take anything from these posts, just remember that even after the crisis is over, these issues will persist. In many ways, it’s almost as if we had taken one step forward and now we’ve taken a couple steps backwards and it will take time to get back to the stage that we were at before corona (BC), not to mention making any new progress. Something I am particularly keen to mention in this part of the series, in particular, in the whole notion that the pandemic is a great leveller and that “we’re all in this together.” I am not the first person to say this but we are not all in this together. Those most marginalised are most exposed to the virus and the repercussions of the spread. “We’re all in this together” has a very hollow reign.

[i] https://www.directprovision.org/

[ii] https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/charlie-flanagan-apologises-to-kerry-people-over-controversial-direct-provision-centre-1000533.html

[iii] https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/women-in-direct-provision-being-pushed-into-prostitution-1.4085828?fbclid=IwAR1V2PClD-2OSR6FZ9Sc_Zcvn8tJ8lKbY-sSo-Ca0dloQftjICEJi3yzYKE

[iv] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/female-genital-mutilation

[v] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330085115_The_Ebola_Epidemic_Halted_Female_Genital_Cutting_in_Sierra_Leone_Temporarily_Medical_Anthropological_and_Public_Health_Perspectives

[vi] https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/1600-girls-in-ireland-at-risk-of-fgm-978150.html

[vii] https://plan-international.org/news/2020-05-18-girls-somalia-subjected-door-door-fgm

[viii] https://www.un.org/en/observances/female-genital-mutilation-day

[ix] https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/resource-pdf/COVID-19_impact_brief_for_UNFPA_24_April_2020_1.pdf

[x] https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/05/1063122

[xi] https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/fast-facts-10-facts-illustrating-why-we-must-endchildmarriage

[xii] https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicebroster/2020/05/01/coronavirus-is-seriously-impacting-fgm--gender-based-violence/#26f3e9bb215d