Equality between the sexes is not a side issue. A stronger response, regeneration, and a more resilient future are at the heart of it.
Even in a pandemic, or rather, especially in a pandemic, gender inequality is not an issue we can ignore.
So far, consider the fallout: government-ordered lockdowns have shown rapid rises in domestic violence. In low-income countries, threats to the global supply chain have reduced the supply of contraceptives. Schools are closed and schooling lags for girls. And women are almost twice as likely as men in the pandemic economy to lose their jobs. As COVID-19 cut the market for clothing in New York.
If health policymakers were to pick a position that most clearly demonstrates the disproportionate effects on women of the 2014 Ebola epidemic, they would likely point to a maternity ward. Economists, however, could answer the same question by looking at a very different place: food stands.
Oxfam International and UN Women analyzed the economic effects on the area where Ebola struck, a few months after the outbreak subsided. The virus, they found, caused the unemployment rate in Liberia to almost triple for the first time. But while the income of men appeared to bounce back rapidly, it took women much longer to recover. The majority of women were self-employed, many as food vendors, and when a deadly virus was spreading, no one wanted to “eat in the street.”
COVID-19, too, seems to be more dramatically affecting women’s livelihoods than men’s. Early projections indicate that women’s jobs worldwide are 1.8 times as likely to be cut in this recession as men’s jobs. What’s more, their unpaid work caring for children and family members is growing significantly, just as women’s paid work is evaporating. Unpaid employment was already a significant obstacle to women’s economic empowerment before the pandemic started. Today, more women will be forced to leave the workforce entirely, with many schools closing and health services exhausted.
Is the world going to get serious about gender equality at last? That’s a long-standing question, but now I’m asking it even more insistently. And it was women who fell over the edge while the world’s economies were being forced to the brink.
Women in low-paying jobs were already clustered. They were more likely than men to lose those jobs when the pandemic struck. 1.8 times more probable, according to one report.
That’s all job paid for. The need for unpaid jobs, with billions of individuals staying home.
