Introduction

COVID-19 is not the great leveller, as was initially claimed (Ali et al, 2020). Quite the reverse, in fact: both the disease and the measures imposed or recommended by governments to contain its impact disproportionately fell upon the poor and most vulnerable. Vulnerability is an outcome of multiple forms of structural and social discrimination that compound poverty and discrimination across the world, and which is often felt most strongly in the Global South. For example, those living in poverty are vulnerable during the COVID-19 pandemic because they are the least likely to have health insurance, secure employment, savings and spacious homes; those living in countries where health systems are weak or perilously underfunded are the most grievously affected (Stiglitz, 2020). Vulnerability cannot be solely measured by income, whether individual or state-level. The geography and geopolitics of COVID-19 shape people's everyday lived experiences of the pandemic (Dodds et al, 2020). Those who live in rural or poor areas are further away from hospitals, especially good quality ones, and other health and social services. Additionally, people's intersectional characteristics, such as their race or ethnicity, age, (dis)ability and sexuality, as well as gender, leave them open to discrimination that shape their economic and social opportunities. The more axes of discrimination a person experiences, the more disproportionately affected they are by COVID-19. Women and girls marginalized through gender, race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, place of origin, education, employment and culture tend to fare the worst.

To understand the unequal distribution of risks associated with COVID-19, in particular the excessive and unnecessary risks COVID-19 poses to poor women and girls in the Global South, we need to understand not only the politics of gender and development as set out in Chapter One, but also the operation of the global political economy. We turn to this now to explain how women are made vulnerable through the ways they are integrated into and excluded from the global political economy. The point we wish to make, above all, is that the global political economy is not gender-neutral.