COVID-19 is the virus which was first detected in Wuhan, China. And this virus has taken millions of lives across the world. Everyone in this world is either suffering from the different strains of this virus, or has seen deaths in his/her family because of this virus. This virus is a pandemic which is both physically and mentally affecting people across the world.
But, somehow, women are facing much more problems than the men, not because of the virus only, but because of its consequences.
Domestic violence
After the imposition of lockdown across the world, the cases of domestic violence have seen an increase in its graph. Because violent men were at home for almost 4-5 months, they used to beat their wives or did mental torture. Some men would also beat their daughters, sisters and sometimes mothers too. So, an increase in domestic violence has a really bad impact on a female's mental health.
Shortage of money
Many women belong to financially low families. So, when in lockdown many working women and their husbands lost their jobs, the mental pressure and trauma took an increase, and their mental health got severely affected by this.
Sexual violence
As everyone was at home for 4-5 months, the increase in sexual violence took a toll. Women were asked for sex more than their capacity and sexual mood. Husbands started to force their wives for frequent sexual intercourse which again had a bad impact on women's mental as well as physical health.
Sexual assaults
In most of the sexual assault cases in the world, the rapist or the person doing sexual assault on the other person is someone from the family. So, even sexual assaults took a huge increase in the graph. Many females faced sexual assault in the lockdown across the world which had a bad impact on female's mental and physical health.
Pregnant women
Because of all the negativity around the world, not being able to go for fresh air, not being able to go to doctors for regular check-ups, many women faced a kind of mental pressure because of the concern for their health and their baby's health. Because of suffocation in home, many women felt jailed or trapped inside home. As due to pregnancy there are huge chances of mood swings and hormone imbalance, many pregnant women felt extra overwhelmed by the current situation in the world and in their personal lives.
Corona patient
Women who were detected positive had a huge mental trauma. It is said that when a lady in a family gets sick, everyone in the family seems to be sick. So, the women of families who were test positive had a trauma for their own health and for their family's health too. And again this impacted badly on female's mental health.
Statistics of different impacts of COVID-19 on women
Domestic violence
Many countries all over the world reported almost 15-30% increase in domestic violence cases during lockdown. On 24th March, when Prime minister Narendra Modi announced lockdown all over the nation, within fortnight the National Commission for Women reported a 100% rise in cases and complaints of domestic violence.
But, after few months the complaints starting to decrease, not because the husbands/brothers/fathers spared women of their family, but women were now confined in four walls, they couldn't go to police stations, their medium of connecting with their families were cut off, and now women were always in front of the abuser's eyes and they couldn't do anything for themselves.
Sexual violence
When lockdown was imposed, there was a sudden hype in the sexual assault cases all over the world. Marital rape took a hype, women were forced to have sex by their partners without their consent. Many young girls were sexually assaulted by some of their family members. For example, in France, there was a sudden 36% hype in domestic sexual assault in the very first week of lockdown. In India one woman is raped every 20 minutes, and during lockdown there was hype in marital rapes, sexual assaults on both upper and lower class women. In India when lockdown was imposed, there was a 50% hype in sexual assault and marital rapes.
Pregnant women problems
Pregnant women deal with so many physical problems during pregnancy. And not only physical, they go through severe mood swings and mental health imbalance. And if you are pregnant and you come to know that there is a pandemic outside, anyone can be dead and that anyone could be you, or your unborn child, or your family member, these thoughts really made a bad impact on pregnant women's mental health. In a multinational study 93% of pregnant women reported increased levels of stress about getting infected with COVID-19.
Money crisis
In recent studies it is shown that after this pandemic, 96 million people will be pushed towards poverty, and 47 million of whom are women and girls. Because of this, the women who are the sole earner of her family will have to face poverty as well as mental pressure and depression.
Female corona patients
Corona patients ratio says that males are more infected and they die in large numbers than females. Though females have much more survival rate than men, still it is equally traumatizing for women. As men around the world are dieing more, the bread earners of families are gone. When the bread earner of the family is gone, the most affected person will be his wife. And when a lady loses her husband, she has to face many problems in society, financial problems, problems in managing her family as well as earning for her family. So these things are affecting women regarding their mental health and peace. Women are getting more depressed.
Corona is one of the most dangerous pandemics around the world. Many families are getting destroyed by this pandemic. Many people are losing their lives. We can't compare someone's trauma to another person's or gender's trauma. Both men and women are facing mental pressure and mental issues because of this pandemic. Many children have lost their parents, many parents have lost their children, someone's friends are dead, someone's relatives are dead. But women are facing two three steps more of the problems like, domestic violence, sexual assaults, marital rapes and many more. So, corona or COVID-19 had a huge impact on female's mental health around the world, and specially in countries which are developing or underdeveloped.
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