ProGender: A Digital Hub on Gender, the COVID-19 crisis and its Aftermath

ProGender aims to promote bilateral activities between Iceland, Greece, and Norway by creating a digital hub devoted to gender perspectives of COVID-19 and its aftermath. The activities that will be carried out within the hub will be online and will promote gender perspectives, analyses, and policy responses to the COVID-19 crisis through a set of actions and initiatives that enhance cooperation and exchange between Greek, Icelandic and Norwegian institutions. Globally, while the mortality rate of the Covid-19 illness seems to be more severe among the male population, the socio-economic impacts of the coronavirus crisis have serious consequences for the female population: women represent 70% of global health care personnel and are hereby extremely exposed to the risk of the virus. Women, who are also highly exposed to domestic violence and work-life imbalances, are expected to be affected more severely by unemployment and the loss of livelihoods. Although there are common gender challenges across the globe, there are countries, like Iceland and Norway, that are currently best positioned to deal with the crisis in gender-sensitive ways not only because they have female-led governments, but also because they have better gender equality infrastructures, policies and legislation in place.

ProGender will create a hub which will make it possible to transfer of knowledge and best practices and perspectives from the North to the South, it will not be based on a one-way process as the scope of the hub will be to construct and support a framework within which productive and creative interactions benefiting participants from all three countries would take place.