19 April 2002, NIICE Commentary 4161
Alka Khenchi
On 9 April 2020, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, urged the world leaders to put women and girls at the center of their efforts to recover from COVID-19. To fight this pandemic, gender equality and women’s rights have become more essential than ever. But why do women and girls still fall in one of the most vulnerable social categories?
The current COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the lives of many around world. But it impacts the vulnerable ones in an unexpected way, thereby widening the already existent disparities. It is exacerbating the economic and social inequalities, especially in the case of women and girls. The researches conducted by Northwestern University, the University of Mannheim in Germany and the University of California, San Diego suggests that this global crisis is widening the gender inequality gap. This crisis could reverse all the progress that has been made on gender equality and women’s rights till now, and it can make the gender inequality situation worse than ever before.
About 60 percent of women works in the informal sector and above that the existing gender pay gap puts them on the brink of poverty. While women, as caregivers, breadwinners and health care workers, play crucial roles to fight this pandemic. According to UNESCO, there are 1.5 billion children who have dropped out of school now (as on 25 March 2020). The responsibility for the childcare after the closure of schools is making it hard for working mothers to create a balance while working from home. In a study conducted by Institute of Fiscal Studies (UK), it was reported that women were about one-third more likely than men to work in a sector that has been shut down, especially retail and hospitality sectors. Also, one in six female employees who worked for businesses are hit by the lockdown, compared with one in seven of their male counterparts.
The early data on COVID- 19 reported that fatality rate is different between men and women. More men are dying because of COVID- 19, but this critical situation has reallocated the resources and it can have a negative impact on sexual and reproductive health of women. This diversion of resources may also increase the Maternal Mortality Rate. According to the World Health Organisation report on Gender Equity in Health Workforce, 70 percent of frontline health workforce is constituted of women working as as nurses, midwives and medical-care service staff. This data suggests that women are more exposed to COVID-19.
Gender based violence is exacerbating due to the lockdown situation as women are trapped inside the house with their abusers. According to a recent UN report, there is a 25 percent surge in domestic violence all around the world. The strict ‘Stay-at-home’ measures may have an impact on girls’ rights and freedom and the possibility of teenage girls never returning back to school. As has been indicated, this situation could further endanger the girls’ educational rights. Due to this pandemic lockdown, women are unable to contact the civil society, police and judicial service, putting them into a risky situation at home. Their inability to contact friends and peer groups for their psychological support, is also making it hard for women and girls to fight the emotional trauma due to gender-based violence.
Need for Unity
We can provide our support to gender equality by sharing the caregiving work at home, listening to and sharing women’s stories, talking about gender equality with our family and most importantly, by taking care of our own mental health, and that of our loved ones.
There are various social, economic and mental consequences of this pandemic on everyone and we are all in this together. UNICEF has prioritized five advocacy actions to fight this pandemic together such as providing a helping hand to female members of the family, preparing for increases in gender-based violence throughout the COVID-19 outbreak, maintaining core health and education services and systems, engaging women’s and youth rights networks to support connectivity and the flow of vital information and ensuring gender data are available, analyzed and put into action.
Need of Women’s Leadership
Women make up 70 percent of the healthcare workers but only 25 percent of global leaders in healthcare are women. According to 2020 report of Global Health 50/50, the senior decision-making positions of global healthcare institutions are still male dominated. The lack of women’s representation in higher-decision making could be the reason why we are failing to address women’s issues throughout the crisis.
There are reports suggesting countries led by women are tackling the pandemic situation very well. Countries such as Germany, led by Chancellor Angela Markel, have a higher testing rate in the world, Slovakia, led by President Zuzana Čaputová was quicker to implement strict healthcare guidelines and promoting the use of masks and gloves, and so on. The response of Taiwan to COVID-19 was also applauded worldwide. All these countries have one thing in common and that is Women Leadership. Some research indicates that women are more likely to act in empathetic, collectivistic, altruistic, and risk-averse manner, all of which helps to decrease the damage of a contagious virus.
In this context, the voices of the women need to be heard and brought into decision making for enhancing gender sensitivity in all response and recovery efforts. The preparedness, response and recovery efforts can lead to better outcomes if gender equality is promoted at every level. In order to achieve the goal of gender equality during and post-COVID-19 crisis, United Nations focuses on three priorities. First, ensuring women’s equal representation in all COVID-19 response planning and decision-making, second, driving transformative change for equality by addressing the care economy, paid and unpaid and third, targeting women and girls in all efforts to address the socio-economic impact of COVID-19
Putting the gender equality goal at the center, socio-economic recovery efforts will support the rapid recovery of the world from COVID-19, and will fundamentally help to build a more equal, inclusive and resilient societies. This will strengthen the resilience towards such future crises, and it will certainly help to achieve the fifth Sustainable Development Goals- that of Gender Equality by 2030.
