Lockdown and Violence against Women and Children: Insights from Hospital-Based Crisis Intervention Centers in Mumbai, India

The COVID-19 pandemic is still unfolding, and its full impact is yet to be realized. However, global experience from the HIV, Ebola, and Zika epidemics suggests that pandemics, like other disasters and humanitarian crises, affect women more adversely because of the interactions between and among several preexisting and newly added vulnerabilities. One of the most noted impacts of pandemics is the increase in domestic violence and in intimate partner violence (IPV) against women and girls. Pandemic-related food shortages, economic crises, uncertainty about the future, and psychological stress from isolation and quarantine are known to increase the frequency and intensity of