OP-ED: Three ways to reset our approach to security

For a safer and more resilient world, put people before runaway military spending
For all of us, but especially women, the pandemic is a reminder that traditional notions of “security” that fuel the weapons industry cannot protect us from the dangers and challenges we routinely face.

Before the pandemic, women were already over-represented in vulnerable economic sectors and bore the brunt of unpaid care and domestic work. When Covid-19 hit, the women who make up 70% of the global health care workforce found themselves on the frontlines of the response -- even as countless other women lost their livelihoods and took on greater household burdens.

The pandemic will push 47 million more women and girls into extreme poverty. Rates of intimate partner violence -- mainly perpetrated by men against women -- have skyrocketed, in a horrifying “shadow pandemic” of all forms of violence against women and girls.  

Millions of women now face greater risks of female genital mutilation, child marriage, or preventable maternal death.

In short, the virus revealed that gender divides not only persist but are worsening, threatening decades of progress, especially if women continue to be excluded from shaping the response to the pandemic.