COVID‐19 Shelter‐at‐Home Orders: Impacts and Policy Responses in the Context of Intimate Partner Violence

• Published date: 01 December 2020
• Author: Julie Walters
• Date: 01 December 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/wmh3.366

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doi: 10.1002/wmh3.366

© 2020 Policy Studies Organization

COVID‐19 Shelter‐at‐Home Orders: Impacts and Policy

Responses in the Context of Intimate Partner Violence

Julie Walters

On January 5, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO, 2020)published its first global an-

nouncement about a cluster of pneumonia cases of unknown etiology detected in Wuhan City, Hubei

Province of China. Throughout that month, globally, health experts attempted to gather more data to

better understand the nature of the mysterious illness. On February 11, 2020, the WHO assigned the

name COVID‐19 to the disease and by mid‐March, declared it a pandemic, having documented

114 countries reporting cases (Ghebreyesus, 2020). Until mid‐March, much of the daily lives of people

around the world, including the lives of those experiencing intimate partner violence, remained status

quo. COVID‐19 was unknown prior to this pandemic and globally medical researchers are collecting

data that can help frame government policy responses for mitigating its spread until both a vaccine

and an effective treatment are found. While COVID‐19 negatively impacts public health, economic,

and social structures, individual stakeholder groups experience differential impacts. This article

provides a preliminary assessment of how related public health policy interventions are affecting the

incidence of intimate partner violence and presents several recommendations for mitigating their

impact at the national and subnational levels of government.

KEY WORDS: COVID‐19, public policy, intimate partner violence

Intimate Partner Violence: Prepandemic

Documented worldwide, with women bearing the greatest burden, intimate

partner violence includes behavior by an intimate partner or ex‐partner that causes

physical, sexual, or psychological harm, including physical aggression, sexual co-

ercion, psychological abuse, and controlling behaviors (Garcia‐Moreno, Guedes, &

Knerr, 2012).

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Though most estimates of the prevalence of intimate partner violence

do not include psychological violence due to disagreement among researchers on

standard measures of it, physical and sexual aspects of IPV alone reveal the pro-

found extent of this worldwide problem. Prevalence estimates of intimate partner

violence range from 23.2 percent in high‐income countries and 24.6 percent in the

WHO Western Pacific region to 37 percent in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean

region, and 37.7 percent in the WHO South‐East Asia region (World Health

Organization, 2017). In addition, worldwide, intimate partners are responsible for

the murders of as many as 38 percent of women (World Health Organization, 2017).

Hence, even before the COVID‐19 pandemic, intimate partner violence was an

ongoing global public health crisis.