11 May 2020|Noida | Amity University, Noida
Challenges and Opportunities during COVID-19 discussed during webinars at Amity University
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A webinar on ‘A Gender Lens on Covid-19’ was conducted by Ms Nishtha Satyam, Deputy Country Representative - UN Women, India who shared how mortality among men is higher in India as compared to the rest of the world. “Any disaster impacts women more than men affecting their nutrition, economic autonomy etc making them more vulnerable to violence, disease. It makes it very essential to talk about these issues when there is time and these webinars are a wonderful opportunity to make our voice reach out to the government,” said Ms Satyam.
To really foster action it is important to understand the pandemic recovery and response. She shared how according to the UN Policy Brief on the Impact of COVID-19 on Women, there are also important gender dimensions. ‘Because of pre-existing gender-based inequalities, women will likely experience more difficulty finding new jobs or entrepreneurship opportunities for their economic recovery. Women are over-represented in some services most impacted by the crisis, mostly lacking social protection. They bear a disproportionate burden in the care economy. Women also represent approximately 70 percent of front line workers dealing with the pandemic in the health and social sector, many of whom are migrant workers,’ stated the report.
According to the UN report, the COVID-19 global crisis has made starkly visible the fact that the world’s formal economies and the maintenance of our daily lives are built on the invisible and unpaid labor of women and girls. “With children out of school, intensified care needs of older persons and ill family members, and overwhelmed health services, demands for care work in a COVID19 world have intensified exponentially. The unpaid care economy is a critical mainstay of the COVID-19 response: There are gross imbalances in the gender distribution of unpaid care work. Before COVID-19 became a universal pandemic, women were doing three times as much unpaid care and domestic work as men. This unseen economy has real impacts on the formal economy, and women’s lives,” shared Ms Satyam.
The UN report further states how every COVID-19 response plans and every recovery package and budgeting of resources, needs to address the gender impacts of this pandemic. This means: (1) including women and women’s organizations at the heart of the COVID-19 response; (2) transforming the inequities of unpaid care work into a new, inclusive care economy that works for everyone; and (3) designing socio-economic plans with an intentional focus on the lives and futures of women and girls. “Putting women and girls at the centre of economies will fundamentally drive better and more sustainable development outcomes for all, support a more rapid recovery, and place us back on a footing to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals,” stated Ms Satyam.
Another webinar talk was conducted by Dr. V M Katoch, NASI-ICMR Chair on Public Health Research at Rajasthan University of Health Sciences, Jaipur; President, JIPMER, Puducherry ; Former Secretary, Department of Health Research, Ministry of Health & Family welfare, Government of India. The webinar was organized under the aegis of Amity Science Technology and Innovation Foundation (ASTIF). During this webinar Dr. Katoch delivered the talk on COVID-19: Biomedical Research Challenges and Opportunities.
“The coronavirus warriors are ready to fight without any weapon. We cannot stop the spread but slow down the speed of spread. Now our country has better support system as DRDO, AYUSH and many more are working hard to fight against the coronavirus,” said Dr. Katoch.
He further added that there are many new facts and theories coming with the corona virus like symptomatic vs asymptomatic etc. “The change in theory has posed many questions like will these mask help in extreme corona spread, how long the virus will survive, what type of social distancing should be followed etc,,” said Dr. Katoch.
He shared with the students that new technology and Artificial Intelligence needs to be used to find solution. “Ayurveda, Homeopathic was also present at the time of earlier diseases but now we should look these angles with the technology perspective also. We should not wait for others create own networking but we should reach masses averred Dr. Katoch.