Maintaining Women’s Wellbeing: the role of environment and community during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

An online survey conducted in two Australian states (South Australia and Victoria) to study the impact of the pandemic on multi-dimensional wellbeing of individuals found that a higher proportion of women maintained overall wellbeing. Although women reported lower levels of wellbeing in psychological health and similar rates of physical health and living standards compared to men, they achieved higher levels of wellbeing in the ecology and community domains. This paper argues that women’s utilisation of blue/green space and social connection played a key role in maintaining wellbeing. Comparing the findings for South Australia and Victoria suggest that women’s overall hopefulness and resilience in the pandemic decreased with the severity and length of mobility restrictions.

KEYWORDS:

• Wellbeing
• women
• COVID-19 pandemic
• Australia
• blue/green space
• community

Acknowledgement

This research was funded by Flinders University under the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences research grant scheme and the Flinders University COVID-19 Research Grant Scheme. The authors wish to thank Gour Dasvarma and James Chalmers for their technical advice on the survey instrument and candid feedback on earlier drafts of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Declaration of interest

None of the authors declare an interest

Notes

1 The Commonwealth of Australia has a three-tiered governance structure, with the federal government at the top, a second tier consisting of six states and two self-governing territories, and the third and lowest tier formed by local councils.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Susanne Schech

Professor Susanne Schech is a social science researcher at Flinders University with a background in human geography and development studies. She has researched and published on a broad range of topics related to critical geographies of migration and refugee resettlement, and gender, culture and development. Her current research projects focus on Red Cross humanitarianism and seasonal labour migration.

Melinda Dodd

Melinda Dodd is Research Associate at Flinders University working on several projects including seasonal labour migration and wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic. She has recently completed a PhD on intersection of climate change, migration, and the Sustainable Development Goals in the South Pacific.

Udoy Saikia

Associate Professor Udoy Saikia is a social science researcher at Flinders University with a background in demography, economics, and human geography. His long-standing research interest relate to population dynamics, human wellbeing and sustainable development. Udoy's recent research has focused on multidimensional wellbeing in various contexts including development, migration, youth, and the COVID pandemic. He has led a number of successful research collaborations on wellbeing in various countries, including the Timor-Leste National Human Development Report 2018 and an ARC Linkage project on seasonal labour migration programs in Timor-Leste.