NEW YORK, Mar 04 (IPS) – The following opinion piece is part of series to mark the upcoming International Women’s Day March 8.In 2020, progress on gender equality stalled or regressed in many countries in large part because of the far-reaching impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a recent analysis, by 2021, around 435 million girls and women will be living on less than $1.90 a day, including 47 million pushed into poverty as a result of the pandemic. Global lockdowns contributed to a surge of gender-based violence worldwide, and estimates show that sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), the bedrock of gender equality, have been severely disrupted, resulting in an additional 49 million women at risk of experiencing an unmet need for modern contraception. Our most pressing global issues have seldom been so daunting, and fault lines in existing social, political, and economic systems have never been so deep.
Egypt: Fact-checking site’s entire newsroom jailed as assault on press freedom widens 
Nearly 64,000 flee Nigeria for Niger where a humanitarian crisis is deepening 
Ebola: IOM urges wider surveillance beyond formal routes in DR Congo 
Before We Declare Gender Bias Dead, Read the Footnotes 
World News in Brief: Ending cholera by 2030 ‘within reach’, Haiti displacement and hunger, US human rights review rescheduled 
Climate crisis could push 141 million more women into extreme poverty 
Light is hard to block from every direction. This physicist found a way