2021: Visualising gender in times of pandemic 

1000 moments, 1000 different lives, across 65 countries in the world, This is Gender 2021 provides profound insights into how gender shapes people’s lives in a time of unprecedented social pressure and crisis.   

The COVID-19 pandemic is gendered. Not only has COVID-19 starkly revealed gender to be a major driver of health- who gets sick and who lives or dies-, it has also exposed existing social fractures and inequalities and exasperated pervasive and restrictive notions of gender. 

Our Sex, Gender, Covid-19 work reveals a systematic failure to address gender in the global pandemic response. Governments that fail to record sex-disaggregated data; whole communities of trans and gender-diverse people occluded from reporting; a global health system unwilling to factor gender into their response; these gaps and imbalances create major blind spots in our understanding of COVID-19 and inhibit our ability to achieve better health and equal opportunities for all people of all genders, everywhere. There can be no equality until everyone is seen. 

To counter pervasive gender blindness and to accompany our 2021 report Gender Equality: Flying Blind in Times of Crisis, This is Gender 2021 drew together a panel of international experts to select 30 images from across the world that explore gender in pandemic in all its diversity.

Winning image

Belinda Qaqamba Ka-Fassie, a drag artist and activist, poses at a Shisanyama—a community space where women cook and sell meat—in Khayelitsha, a township located on the Cape Flats, near Cape Town, South Africa.

BLACK DRAG MAGIC – PORTAIT OF A DRAG ARTIST AND ACTIVIST, (Khayelitsha, Cape Town, South Africa. 2019), Lee-Ann Olwage.

Read more about Lee-Ann’s creative process and her winning image in our exclusive Representation Matters interview and watch her flash frames for snap insights into the work. #Blackdragmagic, behind the image 

Arisleyda Dilone cuts her hair at Rockaway Beach in New York City.
MY OWN WINGS, (New York City, USA, 2020), Katia Repina.
A healthcare worker gives an tetanus injection to a pregnant woman at her clinic on the remote island of Sunderban, India.
HEALTH CENTRE IN A REMOTE ISLAND, (Sunderban, West Bengal, India, 2020), Arpan Basu Chowdhury.
Liam gazes towards the camera, his fur coat slipping off his shoulder to reveal a torso patterned with scars. He’s been crying.
FAKE FUR AND REAL SCARS, (Vermont, Australia, 2020),
Su Cassiano.
Darwin and 3 friends flick through a photo album at their home in Honduras.
DARWIN, (Honduras, 2017), Francesca Volpi.
A shirtless man poses in a luminous green wig and a pink petal mask that obscures his eyes.
FLOWERS ARE BEAUTIFUL, (Kenya, 2020), Anwar Sadat Swaka.
PALOMAS, TRANSSEXUALITY AND PANDEMIC, (São Paulo, Brazil, 2020), Dan Agostini.

What does gender mean in a time of global pandemic?

From trans sex workers struggling to get by in Brazil, child-rearing in a Rohingya refugee camp, a sari fashioned into makeshift PPE in a rural Indian clinic to reflections on intergenerational trauma and masculinity in Australia, each image offers an aperture through which to witness the diffusion of gender norms through our lives. They cast light on how our gender shapes the systems in which we live, the opportunities, choices and rights we have, and the way we understand our minds and bodies. 

Taken together, the photographs offer a greater field of depth that renders visible what it means to be a gendered body in a time of pandemic. Vibrant, dynamic, and defiant, they disrupt the gender blindness of the COVID-19 response and demand to be seen.

Toma and Tuktuki kiss each other through their masks during the COVID-19 lockdown in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
TRANSGENDER HEROES, (Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2020), Mohammad Rakibul Hasan.
Toma and Tuktuki sit apart on a bed in their shared room. Like many Hijra, the third gender population in Bangladesh, discrimination has forced Toma Tuktuki into sex work.
TRANSGENDER HEROES, (Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2020), Mohammad Rakibul Hasan.
A protester holding a flag with #EndSARS scrawled across his white vest joins thousand in Lagos to protest police brutality.
THE AWOKEN, (Lekki toll gate, Lagos, Nigeria, 2020), Assam Gabriel.
A man screams, hands clasped, eyes closed. Around him others wave signs to protest police brutality and demand the disbandment of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, a notorious unit of the Nigerian Police with a long record of abuses.
THE AWOKEN II, (Lekki toll gate, Lagos, Nigeria, 2020), Assam Gabriel.
A young girl waves the US flag in front of a large grey building at a Black Lives Matter protest in Los Angeles.
A NATION IN DISTTRESS, (Los Angeles, United States of America, 2020), Abel Alonzo.
Bolatito emerges through the morning mist at Obake village on the mountain of Erin in Osun state, Nigeria, clad in a heavy shawl and concealed behind a brightly coloured mask
PRECAUTION, (Obake village, Nigeria, 2020), Ismail Odetola.
Photographer Tamara Merino takes a self-portrait with her son Ikal on their first day of quarantine during sunrise.
THE NATURE THAT INHABITS US, (Santiago de Chile, 2020),
Tamara Merino.
Nadia and her two sons clean the entrails of a slaughtered cow during a festival in Egypt.
THE BUTCHER’S FAMILY, (Egypt, 2019), Abdelaziz Ibrahim.
A woman shaves her husband’s head in their home in Ogun, Nigeria.
THE MAN’S WOMAN, (Ogun, Nigeria, 2020),
Francis “Beloved” Ogunyemi.
Siomara cradles her niece and nephew at their home in Mexico, where she has cared for them since the femicide of their mother in 2017.
SUBSTITUTE MOTHER,
(Mexico City, Mexico, 2019),
Greta Rico.

Two houseless transgender teenagers hold each other in a field.
FIELD Bbs, (Portland, Oregon, USA, 2020), Mason Rose.
A young boy’s face fills the frame. He bites his lip.
EISH…MA1 & PAKAIPA, (Harare, Zimbabwe, 2020), Tadiwanashe “Tadiwa” Murowe.
Hotel housekeeper Liza Cruz, age 42, poses for a portrait at her home with a pile of laundry in front of her.
MAKING IT WORK, (Oregon State and Washington State, USA, 2020),
Nash & Co.
A woman smokes a cigarette next to her child in a small mud hut kitchen in the village of Taluka, Uttarakhand, India.
SMOKEY THOUGHTS, (Taluka, Uttarakhand, India, 2016), Avra Ghosh.
Drag Queen Salma poses on the bed in a room in Cuba.
HAVANA QUEEN STORY, (Havana, Cuba, 2019), Robin Yong.
Queen Nicki Rangoon, 24 years-old, poses on a green sofa for a portrait in her bedroom in Yangon, Myanmar.
QUEEN NICKI RANGOON, (Yangon, Myanmar, 2020), Chiara Luxardo.
Sisa (Narcisa) Lozano Guayllas, a 33 year-old teacher from Saraguro, Ecuador, poses for the camera.
WOMEN EDUCATORS, (Quito, Ecuador, 2020), Karen Toro.
Two women grind green lentils on a hand mill in a village in Turkey.
HAND GRINDER, (Turkey, 2019), Ramazan Cirakoglu.
Rosa selects her clothes for a gig later that night. In the next room Usagi, a young geiko apprentice already an expert in drum sound and dolphin dance, touches up her make-up.
MAZE OF METAMORPHOSIS, (Nagoya, Japan, 2019), Silvia Alessi.
A grandfather gently brushes back his granddaughter’s hair on a makeshift hammock in the Kutupalong Rohingya Refugee Camp, Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh.
ROHINGYA REFUGEE LIFE IN BANGLADESH, (Kutupalong Rohingya Refugee Camp, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, 2020), Ziaul Huque.

WOMEN OF SREBRENICA, (Srebrenica, Bosnia, 2015), Mara Scampoli.
A group of women mourn at the graves of their loved ones who were slaughtered during the massacre.
WOMEN OF SREBRENICA, (Srebrenica, Bosnia, 2015), Mara Scampoli.
PALOMAS, TRANSSEXUALITY AND PANDEMIC, (São Paulo, Brazil, 2020), Dan Agostini.
At the end of a dimly lit walkway bordered by makeshift room dividers, Kimberli, Allana and Janaina pose on a bunk bed backgrounded by a pink wall.
PALOMAS, TRANSSEXUALITY AND PANDEMIC, (São Paulo, Brazil, 2020), Dan Agostini.
PALOMAS, TRANSSEXUALITY AND PANDEMIC, (São Paulo, Brazil, 2020), Dan Agostini.
A young man stares directly into the camera in front of a blurry blue backdrop, his red lipstick slightly smeared.
LOVE, FUCK & PRAY, (Tokyo, Japan, 2019), Jonas Van der Haegen.
A young man lies on yellow grass. He seems pensive, relaxed amongst the muted colour of the faded grass.
LOVE, FUCK & PRAY, (Tokyo, Japan, 2019), Jonas Van der Haegen.

The judging panel

The shortlisted This is Gender images were chosen by a panel of expert judges from over 1000 submissions. We are grateful to our judging panel for the time, insights, expertise and critiques they provided in producing this selection of imagery.

Jessica Horn, Founding member, the African Feminist Forum and Commissioner on the Lancet Commission on Gender and Global Health

Suhair Khan, Strategic Projects at Google and Founder/Director of Open/Ended

Azu Nwagbogu, Founder and Director of African Artists’ Foundation

Esra’a Al Shafei,  Human rights activist and founder of Majal.org

Longlisting panel

Ayesha Ahmad, Lecturer in Global Health, St George’s University of London

Imogen Bakelmun, Communications lead, Global Health 50/50 and curator, This is Gender

Rochelle Burgess, Lecturer in Global Health, University College London

THIS IS GENDER 2021 IS PROUDLY SPONSORED BY THE GLOBAL HEALTH INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY FUND (GHIT) 

Many thanks to GHIT for their generous support of This is Gender 2021: Visualising gender in times of pandemic

Where next?

Explore our 2021 Global Report 

Dive into the visuals and data of our Global Health 50/50 2021 report: Gender Equality: Flying Blind in Times of Crisis.

Discover the gendered pathways of Covid-19

Learn more about the impact of Covid-19 through the Global Health 50/50 Sex, Gender and Covid-19 Project.

Get the Long Exposure

Dive into the creative processes, visual ethics, and exclusive behind-the-scenes details of selected images in our Representation Matters series.

Need More Info or Have Questions? 

For inquiries about This is Gender 2021: Visualizing Gender in Times of Pandemic, contact our curator Imogen Bakelmun at imogen.bakelmun@globalhealth5050.org.