COVID-19 Progress Report: Women Face Greater Socio-Economic Risk as Fallout of Derailed Equality Progress Globally

Women and girls are at a greater socio-economic risk due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has derailed progress towards gender equality in the world. They are increasingly more likely to face poverty, economic insecurity, gender-based violence and have limited access to health services globally.

This was revealed by the Foreign Policy Analytics in their recent report titled “Elevating Gender Equality in COVID-19 Economic Recovery”. The report critically examines existing evidence of how women have been impacted by the pandemic, how governments have responded to date, and what is at stake if policymakers fail to enact more inclusive recovery measures.

“As the COVID-19 pandemic devastates economies and disrupts labor markets globally, women have dropped out of the workforce at a greater rate than men. The International Labour Organization (ILO) reported that at the global level, employment loss for women in 2020 was 5 percent, compared to 3.9 percent for men.

Source: FP Analytics Report

For disruption in paid work, a survey in India, Kenya, Ghana, and South Africa revealed that 35 percent of young women were unable to continue with their regular paid work after the onset of the pandemic.

Source: FP Analytics Report

According to the report, “UN Women’s Rapid Gender Assessment surveys conducted in 38 countries from April to November 2020 found that the pandemic forced both men and women to spend more time on child care. Thirty-three percent of women increased their time spent on at least three activities related to unpaid care work compared to 26 percent of men, who already shoulder far less of the burden.

A poll conducted for UN Women in 16 high- and middle-income countries in October 2020 found that the average time spent by women on child care tasks increased from 26 to 31 hours per week since the onset of the pandemic whereas that of men  increased from 20 hours to 24 hours.

Socio-economic Impacts of Covid-19: Women and Work 

The report shows that women form 70 percent of workers in the health and social sectors combined and contribute $3 trillion annually to global health, half in the form of unpaid care work.

The report also says that there are more women in informal, low-paid and I’m low skilled sectors and occupations. Women also bear a disproportionate amount of care work while have less access to social protections and health benefits that come with formal employment. 

“Both women wage workers and entrepreneurs are disproportionately concentrated in social sectors— including hospitality, retail, food services, and tourism—that are among the hardest hit by the pandemic. 

Evidence also shows, according to the report, that women have experienced more permanent job losses and loss of income and have a harder time recovering than men. Businesses that are women-led have reported more closures and have been hard-hit by problems with sales, profits, liquidity and growth. 

As a result of these, many women have depleted savings, sold assets, and taken on heavy debts that will be difficult if not impossible to pay back. 

The informality of work and their gender makes women even more vulnerable with heightened risk of sexual and gender-based violence and exploitation.” 

Gender-Blind Policy Responses 

The report’s assessment of policy responses to the impact of Covid 19 is that the policies set up by governments and international organisations are not cognizant of the effects on women. “The vast majority of pandemic recovery policies to date—including social protection, labor market, fiscal, and economic measures—have been designed without a gender perspective. This can worsen existing economic, health, and other inequities.”

For example, most of the IMF loans that have been negotiated since March 2020 (over 80%) require such fiscal consolidation measures that will likely lead to reduction in country’s expenditure on critical social and health services, services that women rely on. 

This is even more challenging for low and middle income countries where those social services are already scarce. 

Where Does Nigeria Stand?

Busola Ajibola, gender equality advocate and policy analyst commenting on the findings of the report said that before Covid-19, women and girls have borne the burden of care – for children, for the sick, and the elderly and Covid-19 significantly increased the burden of care on women. The implications of these were significant on women’s careers, businesses and income. 

She said further that where it was easy for men to navigate the new world of work, which was mostly driven by technology while women, already challenged by access to digital tools by reason of socioeconomic disdavantages, got stuck struggling to navigate the burden of care and meeting up with job expectations.

A good number of women actually gave up jobs to be able to take care of responsibilities in the homes further tilting the poverty scales against women.    Some, who couldn’t strike a balance and didn’t quit their jobs were penalised where key performance indicators were deployed.

“We must also bear in mind that most frontline responders to the pandemic were women in Nigeria, as well as world over, Doctors, Nurses, Virologists, Teachers, Journalists and so on. Women therefore experienced direct risk exposure to the virus without any support, social or otherwise.” 

Meanwhile, several areas of women’s rights, especially reproductive rights took a back seat in the middle of the pandemic. The pandemic happened just as the campaign agains sexual and gender-based violence was gaining traction and decidedly slowed down any gains in that regard.

Dataphyte’s Gender in Nigeria report 2020 had noted that cloudy days were ahead for women and girls in Nigeria. The report examined development and socioeconomic issues such as key health and welfare indices like socio-economic emancipation of women, knowledge and access to key health information such as family planning methods and child feeding practices, prevalence of sexual and gender-based violence, among others.

The Gender in Nigeria report further substantiates FPs assessment of the impact of austerity on low and mid-income countries like Nigeria. Infrastructural deficits and welfare inadequacies are apparent in various strata of life in Nigeria but these shortages are more acutely felt among women and girls.

These inadequacies are compounded by social and cultural practices and discriminations such as women’s inability to own property in parts of the country, still high incidences of female genital mutilation and unequal access to opportunities for instance the 10.5 million out of school children in Nigeria are predominantly female.

In Nigeria today, women make-up only 7% of elective positions and there continues to be a challenge of consequential representation especially in rooms where policies are designed and executed. 

In the absence of such representation, gender-blind policies might be inevitable.

Policy Recommendations 

The report recommended five priority areas to comprehensively respond to the socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19, mitigate the gender-inequitable consequences of policy action to date, and address the root causes of gender and other intersecting inequalities.  

These recommendations include supporting universal and gender-responsive social protections and safety nets that reduce gender-based vulnerabilities throughout life, regardless of employment or migration status and undertaking job stimulus targeted support, and multisectoral policy action to restructure labor markets that marginalize women. 

Others are: rebuilding economic and health systems that do not rely upon the unpaid and underpaid care work of women, mobilizing more and better resources to support gender equality both nationally and abroad and investing in robust gender data systems and research efforts that bring visibility to people’s differential and specific barriers and needs based on their gender and other intersecting sources of inequality.

These recommendations would require contextual domestication across different climes and especially for developing nations like Nigeria where social infrastructures are still far from the ideal.