About the Project
The Sex, Gender and Covid-19 Project is a partnership of Global Health 50/50 (housed at University College London), the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) and the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW). The project is building the world’s largest database of sex-disaggregated data on COVID-19, investigating the roles sex and gender are playing in the outbreak, building the evidence base of whether countries are considering gender and equity in their COVID-19 health policies, and advocating for effective gender-responsive approaches to pandemic.
Understanding and addressing the impacts of both sex and gender on health outcomes is critical to building equitable, sustainable and healthy societies. The COVID-19 pandemic is no different. From the first reports of the novel coronavirus, there has been consistent evidence of its gendered impact. In its early investigations, however, Global Health 50/50 found that only a handful of countries were reporting sex-disaggregated data on COVID-19, and that no initiative had taken responsibility for consolidating the data that were available. In response, Global Health 50/50 established the COVID-19 Data Tracker, which compiles national data, disaggregated by sex and age.
More recently, the Project has launched the Sex, Gender and COVID-19 Health Policy Portal which provides the most comprehensive analysis of the inclusion of gender, equity and human rights into national COVID-19 health policies globally, as well as offering an open-access health policy repository.
Over the course of the project, Global Health 50/50, ICRW and APHRC will be working together to expand the Data Tracker, track national policy responses and urge national and sub-national health programmes and global health institutions to report sex-disaggregated data and apply intersectional gender analysis to inform COVID-19 responses.
The project is supported with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.