Ensuring Acces to Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare.

Location: Dominican Republic

Feminist groups in the Dominican Republic have been putting pressure on the Dominican State to guarantee equality standards and pay attention to the needs of women in their crisis management plans to avoid exacerbating gender inequalities during the pandemic.We have prepared a document with a list of demands to the State, currently, none of the state commissions or committees for the management of the crisis, aim to develop policies to face gender violence while we live the pandemic. As an important part of our list of demands we have Reproductive health services to be included as an essential and urgent part within the COVID19 response package.We are demanding the government to guarantee women's timely access to sexual and reproductive health services in Primary Care Units, including a wide range of contraceptive methods and emergency contraception.We won’t stop until the government include women in the management plans of the pandemic.In the country there is a high rate of women who work in the informal sector and who dedicate themselves to domestic work, thanks to the demands of feminist groups, more than 2,000, two thousand women from the informal sector were included in the government subsidy program.

Journey of Protests on Social Media.Demanding the government the inclusion of women at the heart of the response to COVID 19.

An important lesson that we have learnt during this pandemic is that in times of crisis, the worst part is borne by women and girls'' , no nation can progress if its women and girls are caught in the circle of poverty, when they don't have the health care they need, when don't have power to make decisions, when they cannot take a job for which they will receive equal pay for equal work.It becomes more necessary than ever to keep supporting women to participate more actively in economic, social and political life, that is the main key to reduce poverty and increase the well being of women and girls, their families and communities.We have to emerge from this period with renewed energy, resilience and capacity for innovation.