What innovations can address inequalities experienced by women and girls due to the COVID-19 pandemic across the different areas of life/domains: work, health, living standards, personal security, participation and education?

  1. Llinos Haf Spencer
  2. Ned Hartfiel
  3. Annie Hendry
  4. Bethany Anthony
  5. Abraham Makanjuola
  6. Kalpa Pisavadia
  7. Jacob Davies
  8. Nathan Bray
  9. Dyfrig Hughes
  10. Clare Wilkinson
  11. Deb Fitzsimmons
  12. Rhiannon Tudor Edwards

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Abstract

What is a Rapid Review?

Our rapid reviews use a variation of the systematic review approach, abbreviating or omitting some components to generate the evidence to inform stakeholders promptly whilst maintaining attention to bias. They follow the methodological recommendations and minimum standards for conducting and reporting rapid reviews, including a structured protocol, systematic search, screening, data extraction, critical appraisal and evidence synthesis to answer a specific question and identify key research gaps. They take one to two months, depending on the breadth and complexity of the research topic/question(s), the extent of the evidence base and type of analysis required for synthesis.

Background / Aim of Rapid Review

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to differential economic, health and social impacts illuminating prevailing gender inequalities (WEN Wales, 2020). This rapid review investigated evidence for effectiveness of interventions to address gender inequalities across the domains of work, health, living standards, personal security, participation, and education.

Key Findings

Extent of the evidence base

  • 21 studies were identified: 7 reviews, 6 commentaries and 8 primary studies

  • Limited evidence for the effectiveness of identified innovations in minority groups

  • A lack of evaluation data for educational interventions

  • A lack of evidence for cost-effectiveness of the identified interventions

  • 14 additional articles were identified in the grey literature but not used to inform findings (apart from the Education domain, where there was a lack of peer-reviewed evidence).

Recency of the evidence base

  • All studies were published in 2020-2021

Summary of findings

Some evidence supported interventions/innovations related to work :

  • Permanent contracts, full-time hours, and national childcare programmes to increase income for women and thereby decrease the existing gender wage gap.

  • More frequent use of online platforms in the presentation of professional work can reduce gender disparities due to time saved in travel away from home.

Some evidence supported interventions/innovations related to health :

  • Leadership in digital health companies could benefit from women developing gender-friendly technology that meets the health needs of women.

  • Create authentic partnerships with black women and female-led organisations to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality (Bray & McLemore, 2021).

Some evidence supported interventions/innovations related to living standards including:

  • Multi-dimensional care provided to women and their children experiencing homelessness.

Limited evidence supported interventions/innovations related to personal security including:

  • Specific training of social workers, psychologists and therapists to empower women to use coping strategies and utilise services to gain protection from abusive partners.

  • Helplines, virtual safe spaces smart phone applications and online counselling to address issues of violence and abuse for women and girls.

Very limited evidence supported interventions/innovations related to participation including:

  • Use of online platforms to reduce gender disparities in the presentation of academic/professional work.

  • Ensuring equal representation, including women and marginalised persons, in pandemic response and recovery planning and decision-making.

Limited evidence from the grey literature described interventions/innovations related to education including:

  • Teacher training curricula development to empower teachers to understand and challenge gender stereotypes in learning environments.

  • Education for girls to enable participation in STEM.

Policy Implications

This evidence can be used to map against existing policies to identify which are supported by the evidence , which are not in current policy and could be implemented and where further research/evaluation is needed .

Further research is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of educational innovations, the effectiveness of the innovations in minority groups and the social value gained from interventions to address gender inequalities.

Strength of Evidence

One systematic review on mobile interventions targeting common mental disorders among pregnant and postpartum women was rated as high quality (Saad et al., 2021). The overall confidence in the strength of evidence was rated as ‘low’ due to study designs . Searches did not include COVID specific resources or pre-prints. There may be additional interventions/innovations that have been implemented to reduce inequalities experienced by women and girls due to the COVID-19 pandemic but have not been evaluated or published in the literature and are therefore not included here.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2022.05.04.22274659: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Ethicsnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    5.2 Search strategy: Below is an example of a search strategy for the Medline database.
    Medline
    suggested: (MEDLINE, RRID:SCR_002185)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    3.9 Limitations of available evidence: Limitations of this rapid review include a lack of high-quality evidence such as RCTs and service evaluation studies that evaluate specific innovations or tailored services to reduce gender inequalities. Only 8 papers in this rapid review were primary studies indicating that more primary research is needed to evaluate specific innovations or tailored interventions to reduce gender inequalities in the UK context. 3.10 Implications for policy and practice: Implications for policy and practice are outlined below for each of the six EHRC domains: 3.10.1 Work: 3.10.2 Health: 3.10.3 Living Standards: 3.10.4 Personal Security: 3.10.5 Participation: 3.10.6 Education: 3.10.7 Further research: Innovations implemented in the domains of personal security, participation and education require robust evaluation. Further research is required to understand the effectiveness of gender equality innovations for minority groups. 3.11 Strengths and limitations: 3.11.1 Strengths: This rapid review focused on the peer-reviewed papers (n=21) in alignment with the six domains identified by EHRC. The 21 peer-reviewed papers were a mixture of reviews, commentaries, and primary studies. Grey literature (n=14) is included in Appendix 2. The rapid review investigated innovations/interventions to reduce gender inequality during the first three waves of the COVID-19 pandemic between March 2020 and December 2021. Data was not presented according to ‘waves’, but data coll...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2022.05.04.22274659v1 on medRxiv