Emotional labor, violence and silence: Pandemic fallout hits women hardest

A newly published editorial in Frontiers in Communication reveals how the COVID-19 pandemic exposed and intensified gender inequality worldwide. Titled “The Gendered Impact of COVID-19: Communicating Risks, Hope, Opportunities, and Challenges,” the piece assesses how flawed public health messaging, domestic policy failures, and structural discrimination combined to disproportionately harm women, especially those from marginalized and underrepresented communities.

Among the contributions analyzed, a study by Bokyung Kim et al. interrogates vaccine hesitancy through an intersectional lens, identifying how gender, race, income, and education intersect to shape health behaviors. The findings emphasize that generalized health messaging fails to capture the realities of low-income women of color who face structural and institutional barriers to vaccination. Limited access to primary healthcare, compounded by socio-economic precarity, means these populations are both medically underserved and culturally misrepresented in mainstream pandemic communication efforts. As a result, the editorial argues for an urgent need to tailor communication strategies to reflect the diverse lived experiences of marginalized women, rather than relying on the universalized category of “women” as a one-size-fits-all approach.

This recognition reframes how public health institutions must address risk communication, not only by diversifying messengers and media platforms but also by explicitly acknowledging how overlapping identities affect decision-making and healthcare outcomes. The pandemic's impact, therefore, cannot be divorced from the structural inequalities that predated it.

How did COVID-19 exacerbate domestic vulnerabilities and spur digital activism?

The editorial also sheds light on gendered violence that escalated behind closed doors during lockdowns. A case study by Ishani Mukherjee et al. on digital activism in India demonstrates how the pandemic created a “crisis within a crisis” for women facing domestic abuse. With physical mobility curtailed and support systems disrupted, many women were effectively locked in with their abusers. This reality went largely unaddressed by official pandemic narratives, which centered on public health risks without accounting for the private sphere of violence.

The #LockDownMeinLockUp campaign on Instagram, examined in this context, became a grassroots form of resistance. Women used visual storytelling to expose hidden abuse by transforming everyday household objects into symbols of confinement and control. Feminist media outlets such as Feminism in India supplemented these visual protests with context-rich reporting, expanding the reach and interpretive power of the campaign. The editorial highlights how digital platforms stepped in where traditional institutions faltered, providing both community and advocacy in a time of systemic silence.

This emergent form of activism not only filled a communication vacuum but also expanded the repertoire of feminist resistance under duress. Celebrity endorsements helped bring the campaign to wider public attention, while its intersectional framing brought nuance to the portrayal of suffering and survival. According to the editorial, these digital narratives demonstrate the evolving nature of gender justice advocacy and reveal the potential of decentralized, tech-enabled communication to challenge patriarchal systems during crises.

What role did gender play in household stress and national protests?

The editorial also explores the burden of domestic labor and emotional resilience through Mamta Saxena et al.’s study on pandemic-induced family stress. Findings indicate that women absorbed the brunt of disruptions to routine life, managing caregiving, household chores, and home-schooling responsibilities with little systemic support. While women showed adaptability and found new ways to maintain family stability, the study warns that prolonged emotional labor without relief leads to compassion fatigue and mental health risks.

Moreover, gendered stress responses differed: women internalized anxiety and exhaustion, while men expressed emotional strain through anger. The study flags this difference as a potential driver of increased domestic violence - a trend corroborated by other data sources globally. The editorial points to this as yet another consequence of poorly coordinated government support and insufficient gender-sensitive infrastructure during lockdowns.

In a broader socio-political context, the analysis of Shaheen Bagh protests by Priya Kapoor brings into focus how citizenship, gender, and state policy intersected during the pandemic. Through a review of protest literature and expert commentary, the study recasts the anti-CAA movement led by Muslim women as a historic assertion of subaltern political agency. The editorial notes that such mobilizations were not only responses to legal exclusions but also symbolic disruptions of state-imposed hierarchies, amplified by the pandemic’s authoritarian management style.