This study examines the gendered impacts of the Ebola virus disease (EVD) in Liberia in the largest outbreak of EVD ever recorded. The findings are based on an extensive two-week desk study and one-week participatory field study conducted in January 2015 in the cities of Monrovia and Buchanan in Liberia.

Gender and sex are addressed in the report in relation to other possible discrimination categories such as social class, geographical region and age. It is emphasised that different forms of discrimination have a tendency to reinforce one another hence causing systematic inequalities and overlapping vulnerabilities. For instance, a young, illiterate and poor woman residing in a shanty town in Liberia was in many ways discriminated even before EVD entered the country (e.g. due to her age, sex, gender, social class, and region), and has therefore been very vulnerable to the short- and long-term impacts of EVD. These include, among other things, reduced health-care possibilities; increased maternal mortality; economic downturn that has hit especially harshly urban petty traders; prolonged closure of the education sector; societal stigmas from EVD and decreased social cohesion in families and communities. It is argued in the study that EVD is an additional vulnerability that has reinforced already existing societal inequalities in Liberia.