COVID-19 has brought a substantial impact on women’s livelihood around the globe, including women in Asia. Countries are trying to mitigate this disruption by applying various gender-sensitive policies and regulations during the pandemic. Yet, little is known about how Asian countries are prioritising this strategy. The current paper aims to navigate how countries are responding to the spread of the virus whilst ensuring women’s welfare through gender-sensitive policies, programs, and regulations. Using a dataset created by UNDP and UN Women, gender response policies are characterised into four main areas, namely Social Protection Measures, Labor Market Measures, Fiscal and Economic Measures, and Violence Against Women Measures. In addition, this paper aims to analyze the correlation of women's leadership in the COVID-19 national task force towards the policies that advocate women’s interests. The findings suggest that women’s low representation in the COVID-19 national task force is resulting in the lack of gender-sensitive policies.

Keywords

Gender Sensitive Policy, COVID-19, Women Leaders, Asia and Women Representation.