Genderbased violence Gender-based violence is a reality for many women and girls. Estimates suggest that around a quarter of all women in Europe and Central Asia have been subjected to some form of violence by an intimate partner during their lifetimes.62 These figures suggest that a significant proportion of women will require a complex network of social services and legal protections, such as emergency protection orders, at some point in their lives. Limited access to technologies and the gender digital divide Women access information and communication technologies less than men, and use them for different purposes, due to multiple factors that include limited economic resources, lower education levels, gender norms and assumptions about women’s role in the labour market. Even in the EU, with high Internet coverage, women are less likely to use the Internet for banking, or for selling or buying goods.63 This gender gap has become significantly more important in today’s digital world, and is especially crucial in emergency situations, when other means of communication and information-sharing may be limited. Assessments conducted by human rights groups and civil society organizations (CSOs) point to specific groups of women in the OSCE region that have been in particularly vulnerable situations during the COVID-19 pandemic and in relation to the emergency measures taken to address it.64 The categories below are neither exhaustive nor exclusive. They also present factors that often overlap in reality (as is the case, for instance, of single elderly women living in conflict zones) and are context-specific. Emergency situations pose differing threats to different groups and, therefore, understanding whether specific groups of women may or may not be particularly vulnerable depends on assessing the full circumstances. • Elderly women. Women in the OSCE region live an average of seven years longer than men. In some countries, women, on average, outlive men by a decade.65 Elderly women are, therefore, more likely to be living in isolation or in care homes or, if they have limited 62 The WHO estimates the lifetime prevalence of intimate partner violence for the European region as 25 per cent of women. See: WHO, Global and Regional Estimates of Violence against Women: prevalence and health Effects of Intimate Partner Violence and Non-Partner Sexual Violence (Geneva: WHO 2013), <https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/ handle/10665/85239/9789241564625_eng.pdf?sequence=1>. Other estimates range from 22-23 per cent. See: European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), Violence against Women: An EU-wide Survey. Results at a Glance (Vienna: FRA 2014), <https://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra-2014-vaw-survey-at-a-glance-oct14_ en.pdf>; and OSCE, OSCE-Led Survey on Violence against Women: Main Report (Vienna: OSCE 2019), <https:// www.osce.org/files/f/documents/9/2/413237_0.pdf>; to 28 per cent when Central Asia is included, UNDP, Human Development Report 2019, op. cit., note 52. 63 EIGE, Gender and Digital Agenda, (Vilnius: EIGE 2016), <https://eige.europa.eu/publications/ gender-and-digital-agenda>. 64 E.g., “UN Women, Voices of Women’s Organisations on COVID-19, April 2020 Sub-regional Consultations”, April 2020, <https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/voices%20of%20womens%20organizations%20 on%20covid19final.pdf>; FRA, “Coronavirus Pandemic in the EU – Fundamental Rights Implications, Bulletin #1”, 7 April 2020, <https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2020/covid19-rights-impact-april-1>; Women Enabled International, “COVID-19 at the Intersection of Gender and Disability: Findings of a Global Human Rights Survey, March to April 2020”, 20 May 2020, <https://womenenabled.org/blog/covid-19-survey-findings/>. 65 For Europe and Central Asia, the female life expectancy at birth is 77.5 years; the male life expectancy is 70.8 years. See UNDP, Human Development Report 2019, op. cit., note 52, p. 315. 20