Violence Against Women Is and Was its Own Pandemic_COVID-19 Made Things Worse

Very early in the COVID-19 pandemic, I wrote two pieces (here and here) outlining that, as with other global crises, a new pandemic would mean frightening increases in the frequency and severity of violence at home: women would be confined, due to lockdowns, with their abusers, with little or no opportunity to seek help, and the compounding stressors of the pandemic (employment uncertainty, fear of becoming ill, kids at home all the time, etc.) would create a perfect storm for escalating violence. Sadly, this has proven largely true, with, for example, rates of femicide (the intentional killing of women because they’re women) increasing in Canada in line with the pandemic, along with the need for services