When the world shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, another crisis quietly grew behind closed doors. Reports from around the globe suggested that violence against women and girls was increasing. Governments, nongovernmental organizations and advocates began referring to the phenomenon as a “shadow pandemic.”
To determine whether these headlines and informal reports reflected reality, we led the first-ever comprehensive review of studies tracking violence against women and girls during infectious disease outbreaks across low- and middle-income countries. We focused on those regions because less research on the topic has been done there, and women and girls face specific risks, such as child marriage, that are less prevalent in wealthier nations.
