Coordinator CEG-INTEC alerts COVID-19 puts women's safety at risk

SANTO DOMINGO. - The COVID-19 It has raised a worldwide alarm against its rapid and exponential progress. The Pre-existing inequalities in the Dominican Republic put women at greater risk, because they live in a society in which discrimination is generated.

This is stated by Fátima Lorenzo, General Coordinator of the Center for Gender Studies of the Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo (CEG-INTEC), in his article "Gender-based and intra-family violence in the context of COVID-19”Published in the Trixel magazine, which highlights that these inequalities produce a lack of equal value and opportunities for women and have a strong cultural roots that make them persist and deepen in situations such as the current one.

The CEG-INTEC coordinator cites that international organizations such as the United Nations Organization for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) have made a call to governments for the projection of increases in violence against women.

"Evidence from previous emergencies (health crises and natural disasters), as well as data from countries that have been fighting COVID-19 for several weeks, suggest that it is violence against women likely to increase in Latin America and the Caribbean in the coming weeks and months ”, highlights Lorenzo according to international reports.

Lorenzo says that the exacerbation of violence in relation to COVID-19 is due to confinement, isolation, economic stress and anxiety, and the reality is that this process of isolation and confinement increases tensions and stress due to the situation of uncertainty linked to health, economics and security.

"This is why the possibility increases that women and families living in abusive relationships, and even in families where this behavior has not become naturalized, are more exposed to violence because they are together for a longer time, in a closest contact, in a future that is uncertain due to the loss of work or the impossibility of going out to look for daily sustenance ”, details the coordinator of CEG-INTEC.

In the health sector, it highlights that "73% of the medical personnel in the Latin American and Caribbean region are made up of women who, in addition, suffer wage discrimination, since the labor income of women working in the health field they are 25% lower than men in the same sector. Women are, therefore, on the front line of battle. ”

In the case of the Dominican Republic, it indicates that they represent 76% of the health sector and are being affected with extended work shifts due to the demand and overflow of medical assistance and with more work at home, as a result of the confinement and closing of schools.

"Given this situation, it is essential that there is a comprehensive view of the services, minimizing the fragmentation in care for violence against women and their sexual and reproductive health," said Lorenzo, while reviewing that in the country more than 800 complaints of Violence has been reported and four femicides have occurred after the explosion of the pandemic.

"It is very important to consider that these days women have less contact with their families and with support and protection networks for them and their sons and daughters, ”he denounces.

Lorenzo considers it imminent that the State, in its actions to confront the pandemic, include in its committees and work teams women with experience who can contribute a more comprehensive perspective when it comes to making decisions so that they are approached in a more adequate way. the particular needs and realities of women, girls and boys.

This also implies, according to Lorenzo, that there is an involvement and coordination of work from the national, municipal and community levels to give a more effective and broader response to the consequences of COVD-19.