The COVID-19 outbreak is impacting societies around the world in an unprecedented manner. However, not everyone, in every place, will be affected in the same way. Considering how the pandemic affects particular groups will help raise the effectiveness of containment efforts and minimize the potential negative impacts. This note focuses on one of such groups: Women and girls. Experiences from previous pandemics 1 show that they can be especially active actors for change, while they can also experience the effects of the crisis in different (and often more negative) ways. Given that the COVID-19 is not gender-blind, the response to it should not be either. Based on the existing evidence and emerging trends the note summarizes key gender differentiated transmission channels and impacts on outcomes across the three areas of endowments, economic conditions, and agency. It also provides recommendations for action (see Table 1). This is a living document, to be completed as more data and analysis are made available.

Occupational segregation significantly contributes to the earnings gender gap worldwide. We look at differences in outcomes for male and female enterprises and their sectors in Sub-Saharan Africa, a region of high female participation in entrepreneurship. Data on Uganda show that women breaking into male-dominated sectors make as much as men, and three times more than women staying in female-dominated sectors. Factors including entrepreneurial skill/abilities and credit/human capital constraints do not explain women's sectoral choices. However, information about profitability, male role models' influence, and exposure to the sector from family and friends are critical in helping women circumvent or overcome norms undergirding occupational segregation.

This paper uses household surveys from 89 countries to look at gender differences in poverty in the developing world. In the absence of individual-level poverty data, the paper looks at what can we learn in terms of gender differences by looking at the available individual and household level information. The estimates are based on the same surveys and welfare measures as official World Bank poverty estimates. The paper focuses on the relationship between age, sex and poverty. And finds that, girls and women of reproductive age are more likely to live in poor households (below the international poverty line) than boys and men. It finds that 122 women between the ages of 25 and 34 live in poor households for every 100 men of the same age group. The analysis also examines the household profiles of the poor, seeking to go beyond headship definitions. Using a demographic household composition shows that nuclear family households of two married adults and children account for 41 percent of poor households, and are the most frequent household where poor women are found. Using an economic household composition classification, households with a male earner, children and a non-income earner spouse are the most frequent among the poor at 36 percent, and the more frequent household where poor women live. For individuals, as well as for households, the presence of children increases the household likelihood to be poor, and this has a specific impact on women, but does not fully explain the observed female poverty penalty.

This study is reproduced with World Bank permission within the UNU-WIDER project on 'Gender and development'.

Using data from the Integrated Values Survey (IVS), the Life in Transition Survey (LiTS), and the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS), we analyse the relation between age and subjective well-being in the World Bank's Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region and compare it to that in Western Europe. Although our results generally confirm previous studies' findings of a U-shaped relation between subjective well-being and age for most of the lifecycle, we also find that well-being in ECA declines again after the 70s, giving rise to an Sshape relation across the entire lifespan. When controlling for socio-demographic characteristics, this pattern generally remains robust for most of our cross-sectional and panel analyses. Hence, despite significant heterogeneity in the pattern of well-being across the lifespan within the ECA region, we do not observe high levels of crosscountry or crosscohort variation.