COVID: The Fifth Wave of Feminism
Five ways women are redefining the ‘new normal’
Feminism is no longer a wave. It is a tsunami waiting to happen. And it has the power to flatten more curves than one.
Movements are often defined by a ‘victim’ — someone to rally around—and a ‘common enemy’ — someone to move against. The feminism movement is articulated in ‘waves’, each of which has been rooted in the simple philosophy of women having equal rights to men.
Here’s a (highly simplified) crash course:
Each wave identified women as the ‘victims’, fighting to smash the patriarchy.
But in 2020, the ‘common enemy’ is not just elitist politicians, not entitled Hollywood movie producers, not even white-middle class women who ignore intersectionality. This new ‘enemy’ is not even human. It’s a virus.
And this time, women are the ‘solutions’, fighting to change the world.
Why? Because while COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on us all, in the process it has also dismantled a system that never really worked in the first place. This allows feminists to reimagine a world where being equal makes everyone stronger, where gender equality is not just another ‘cause’, it’s a strategy survival of the entire human species.
To understand how feminism can flatten the curve, let me break it down for you by the four waves illustrated above — politics, economics, culture, media — and a new dimension unique to wave five: sustainability.
1. POLITICS
We’ve built on the shoulder’s wave one’s fight for the right to vote to (finally) recognizing what women can do when they take the reins as political leaders. Avivah Wittenberg-Cox and Charlotte Seck have shown us how female leaders across the world have risen to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic with phenomenal strength (Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen chose to lead with unparalleled swiftness to protect her people instead of waiting to follow other countries when it’s too late), intellect (Germany’s Angela Merkel chose to build urgency with scientific rigor instead creating chaos with fake news), and authenticity (New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern chose to implement policies that reflect compassion for what ALL her people are going through instead of catering to the popular vote of large corporates).
This doesn’t just smash the patriarchy, it smashes any beliefs that these qualities are unique to men.
Just as importantly, we see male-led countries with strong feminist policies (like Canada) or donor agencies focused on gender equality (like Australia) play a catalytic role in building resilience in developing economies. For instance, many of these ‘woke’ governments are deploying ‘aid’ capital with mandates to equip women from low-income communities, who are disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, to become agents of change that accelerate recovery efforts.
Finally, male politicians are realizing that just like you don’t have to be a polar bear to advocate for climate action, you don’t have to have a vagina to advocate for gender equality.
2. ECONOMICS
We’ve evolved from wave two’s fight for women’s right to work if they wish, to the absolutely critical need to have more women be a part of the workforce. As with every crisis, there is one thing that can bring the entire global economy down — inequality. Women across the world earn ~20% less than their male counterparts. During a pandemic, this means entire families will be broken because many women never had the opportunity to work, earn, save as much as men for the same amount of work. Similarly, the ~9 million girls who drop out of school every year because of child marriage mean countries allowing this have an underskilled workforce translating to millions more lost in GDP.
It is the equivalent of being sent into battle with only half your warriors wearing armor — even if you win, more lives (and livelihoods in this case) will be lost because everyone was not valued equally.
The basis for Gender Lens Investing was built during the 2008 global financial crisis. While the titan banks of Wall Street were begging for bailouts we saw microloans to low-income women in countries like Bangladesh still being repaid with default rates lower than 1%. During COVID-19, we’re seeing similar outperformance by women-focused financial products because they inherently are lower risk. For instance, Asia-Pacific is seeing the rise of a new asset class of Gender Bonds like the IIX Women’s Livelihood Bond Series which was designed by a woman of color — Prof Durreen Shahnaz — for to invest in companies that give low-income women sustainable livelihoods. Interestingly, these Bonds continue to pay investors a steady return while the global market melts down during the pandemic.
So even though Wall Street never really supported women, women can now support Wall Street.
3. CULTURE
Wave three showed us the feminist movement, although powerful, needed to embrace intersectionality — recognizing that aspects of one’s social and political identities might combine to create unique modes of discrimination. The data speaks for itself — even in developed countries like the United States, if you’re an African American woman, you are three times more likely to die during childbirth than if you are white. Now COVID-19 has been termed ‘the great equalizer’ (quoting Madonna) — to be fair, that’s partly true because you can get it whether you’re a Prince or a rockstar. But in reality, racial biases are magnified during a crisis. Take Chicago where 72% of deaths are African American people despite comprising only 30% of the population — this also means the entire city is at higher risk from the virus spreading.
Gradually, people everywhere are realizing that it really does make a difference if the majority of the world is not economically and socially empowered because we are all connected.
We’re also seeing all of a sudden, childcare is an ‘essential services’. Traditionally, this has been an unpaid —or at best underpaid — service dominated by women, usually from low or middle-income families if they are hired. While in many European countries working mothers continue to do one third more housework than their husbands, there is hope. For instance, we’re seeing an evolution in social norms in West Africa where men are reportedly sharing more childcare duties during the pandemic. Maybe this time, we look to developing nations to show us how we can ‘build back better’ instead of waiting for the West to define what ‘normal’ looks like and how to value women’s contributions.
These cultural paradigm shifts will serve as powerful tools for feminists to make the case for why a unified response — by both men and women — to build a gender-equal, colorblind world will be the key to resilience in the post-COVID era.
4. MEDIA
Wave four’s democratization of information through social media gave women the power of voice, mostly about sexual assault in the workplace. During the pandemic, women everywhere are building on the infrastructure put in place by #MeToo, #BalanceTonPorc, or #MeTooMosque (and many others depending on where you live) to speak up about assault at home. Worldwide, one in every three women was likely to face some form of sexual assault pre-pandemic, costing around 2% of global GDP or US$1.5 trillion every year. In some countries like China, gender-based violence has doubled this year, with over 90% of the cases related to social and financial stress caused by COVID-19. This shadow-pandemic of violence stemming from being in lockdown with your abuser has affected millions of women across the world — the United Nations estimates for every 3 months the lockdown continues, an additional 15 million additional cases of gender-based violence are expected. But this time, we see extensive coverage by the likes of the New York Times bringing awareness to the issue and, more critically, a multitude of online resources equipping women to speak up safely and reach out for help more swiftly than ever before.
We also see the traditional media playing a pivotal role by bringing us stories of women who we would never hear from otherwise. Indian journalist Barkha Dutt took COVID-19 coverage out of the ivory tower (that most world leaders are speaking from) to the backstreets of India to give migrant workers a voice and tell their stories. Zara recently came under siege by the media when they laid off 500 (mostly female) workers in Myanmar who asked to be supplied with masks. Primark and other Western retailers have also been exposed by the media for canceling nearly $3 billion worth of orders to ready-made garment factories in Bangladesh, sending more than a million women home.
Journalism is finally telling us real stories about what it means to be a woman — beyond Hollywood.
5. SUSTAINABILITY
Over the last 10 years, I’ve spoken to over 1000 women of color, usually making under $5 a day, battling the dual complexity of poverty and patriarchy. My work (as an impact investing practitioner) has allowed me to speak to doulas in the United States in the West to organic coffee growers in Fiji in the East, from conservation specialists heart of Kenya to handicraft workers in rural India. For years, I’ve tried to focus my work on ‘empowering’ these women — giving them access to capital, skills, other resources.
In 2020, the conversation I’m having with these women I work with is refreshing different. The fifth wave has flipped the entire sustainable development equation to give power back to the (terribly labeled) ‘bottom-of-the-pyramid’. Women make up 70% of frontline health workers in rural communities responding to the pandemic. Women small-scale farmers make up two-thirds of agricultural labor chains that will be critical to food security during phases of recovery. Women laid off from the garment factories I mentioned earlier have mostly switched to making masks and other protective gear — my theory here is women fight wars with compassion, not guns.
COVID-19 has shifted the power dynamics so women — particularly those from low-income or rural communities — are not a marginalized, powerless group waiting to be ‘saved’. I realize they are quite possibly going to ‘save’ the rest of us and help to rebuild the ‘new normal’.
The fifth wave channels all the power of prior feminists from #DeedsNotWords to #TimesUp, creating a multi-dimensional movement. One that firmly recognizes feminism belongs to us all — regardless of color, age, religion, nationality, gender. So the real power of the fifth wave of feminism is that it didn’t stem from one part of the world — it’s built by women everywhere. And when it belongs to us all, we will stop winning one-off (albeit very important) battles and focus on ending the war on women worldwide.
Let’s begin our journey to redefine ‘normal’ in the post COVID-era.
