The present global pandemic has changed everything. We are living in difficult times and the impacts for women and girls in some places have been more negative than for men. The CWP Australia Region Steering Committee would like to highlight this widening of the gender gap and call all fellow parliamentarians to action. Below are some links to research and articles on the current situation.

• Australian Workplace Gender Equality Agency, Gendered impacts of COVID-19, May 2020
• United Nations Population Fund, COVID-19: a gender lens, March 2020 (this paper was published early on in the pandemic, and was intended to flag the ways in which COVID-19 could be expected to affect women, including based on lessons learnt from earlier pandemics)
• UN Women, Ending Violence Against Women and Girls COVID-19 Issues Briefs
• World Bank, Gender dimensions of the COVID-19 pandemic, April 2020
• Center for Global Development, Pandemics and Violence Against Women and Children, Working Paper 528, April 2020
• Commonwealth Parliamentary Association Toolkit for Commonwealth Parliaments and Legislatures on the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic and delivering parliamentary democracy, April 2020