Tomorrow, 11 March 2021, marks a year since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak a pandemic. A year ago, the world as we know it and our daily routines were disrupted to an unprecedented extent overnight. In an effort to curb the spread, governments across the world put in place lockdowns, quarantine measures, stay-in-place orders, closed workplaces and education institutions. Almost immediately, it became very clear that although the pandemic was a great equalizer in the sense that no one was immune to the virus, it was also a great destabilizer of many socio-economic and development trajectories and social justice agenda, least of all: our mission for gender equality. In many ways, the pandemic has exposed so many of our shortcomings in our quest for a fairer and more equitable world.