Feminist Responses to Sexualised Violence - Policy Paper from medica mondiale for the 2021 German parliamentary elections (short version)

The COVID 19 pandemic has made systemic gender inequalities visible worldwide. The unjust distribution of often unpaid care work and the resulting additional burden as well as financial disadvantage for women is just one example. The enormous increase in sexualised and gender-specific violence during the pandemic is also an expression of already existing discriminatory gender relations in patriarchal societies.

At the same time, it is women in particular who are working to contain COVID-19 and support survivors of violence. Through their work in civil society organisations, but also their activities in life-sustaining professions and vital roles for their families, they make an existential contribution to meeting the challenges of the pandemic.

The upcoming German government is faced with the task of working with international partners to develop viable solutions for gender-responsive management of the pandemic and to find feminist responses to the escalating sexualised violence that are effective in the short and long term. So far, politics has hardly taken gender-specific effects of the crisis into account.