In Malawi, there have been 9,991 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 275 confirmed deaths. Initially reported predominantly in towns, the cases here have now spread to the community level and efforts are being invested to prevent further spread of the disease.

The UN Women WCARO annual report aims to share information about the regional office's activities on women empowerment and gender equality in 2020. The said year has been a particularly difficult year around the world with the COVID-19 pandemic. In West and Central Africa (WCA), women and girls were particularly vulnerable to the crisis. To counter these burdens and build medium and long- term recovery measures, the UN Women WCA Regional Office successfully provided multi-faceted assistance...

This publication shows preliminary results and promising practices to support women’s economic empowerment and strengthen resilience in rural areas by promoting women’s access to land, finance, skills and technology for climate resilience and markets in West and Central Africa.

This brief highlights 8 keys interventions to be considered in West and Central Africa by all sectors of society, from governments to international organizations and to civil society organizations in order to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls, at the onset, during, and after the public health crisis. It also considers the economic impact of the pandemic and itsimplications for violence against women and girls in the long-term.

The R-GTG wishes to contribute to the efforts in progress to confront the current pandemic by sharing this note with the Coordinators residing in the region with the intention of encouraging and proposing tools to improve the consideration of the gender issue in the response to COVID-19. In this respect, it addresses the main risks connected to gender when considering the pandemic and makes a specific number of recommendations to respond to it.

This note will help UN Women Country Offices in West and Central Africa, Governments and Development Partners to identify key gender impacts of the crisis to be considered when conducting socio-economic impact assessments of COVID19, in order to develop policy and programmatic actions to mitigate those impacts and to set the foundations of a recovery effort which takes into account women and girls’ needs.

As COVID-19 spreads in Africa, informal workers are hard-pressed to comply with social distancing or confinement measures, as they need to work to provide for their basic needs. Here are three things that UN Women country offices can advocate for to ensure that women working in the informal economy do not fall through the cracks in the current crisis.

The study makes policy recommendations that are designed to confront the gender stereotypes that continue to undermine policy making, address women’s time poverty and lack of incomes, and facilitate the adoption of gender-responsive climate-smart agricultural practices.

In this issue : -Introduction: the gender gap in agricultural productivity -Three takeaways on the gender gap in agricultural productivity -Measuring the cost of the gender gap in agricultural productivity -Costing the factors that contribute to the gender gap in agricultural productivity -Finding the biggest bang for the buck: cost-effective policy interventions -Moving from recommendations to implementation -Appendix A: Methodology for quantifying the cost of the gender gap in...