COVID-19 and Gender Equality
If you type “COVID-19” in the Google Search engine it will show around 5,340,000,000 results. COVID-19 skyrocketed into the spotlight like a fire burning everything around. It affected all of the segments of society: politics, economic development, trade sector, social life, and traveling. The social impact of the pandemic can be particularly damaging if not properly addressed by the community. COVID-19 has prompted an increase in inequality, exclusion, discrimination, and global unemployment in the short and long term. COVID-19 has directly affected gender-based differences and emphasized on the areas where women are particularly at risk. The pandemic had emphasized inequality for front line sector, health sector, childcare, economics, and even at home.
Frontline workers take the number one position when it comes to inequality. Frontline workers and the healthcare sector have taken the most of the impact of the pandemic. They are working around the clock placing their own health and the one of their family at risk. In the healthcare system today, women make up to 76% of all workers exposed to the virus.
By EIGE’s Gender Statistics Database, women make up:
93 % of child care workers and teachers’ aides
86 % of personal care workers in health services
95 % of domestic cleaners and helpers
Women in healthcare provide nursing care, home-based services to older people, and standard medical services. Across the EU, it’s estimated that of these 1.8 million careers, about 83% of them are women. Women are also taking on the roles of cashiers and essential workers during the pandemic. Women working a front line jobs are faced with the bigger exposure to the greater number of people on a daily basis making them more vulnerable to the virus.
The health sector has taken second place underlining a few major problems. The first one comes from the virus response. Every person has equal chances to contract coronavirus, men and older people are more likely to have a lethal ending. COVID-19 shows that impact does not discriminate only based on biological differences but also on social norms. Social norms, in this case, have a different effect on women and men in society. Social norms have affected not only individual behavior and actions but also on overall health. EIGE’s Gender Equality Index shows that in the EU, men are more likely to smoke than women. Smoking, connected to social norms, is one of the examples that prompts the greater risk for developing pneumonia when contracting COVID-19.
However, women protected by social behavior and longer life expectancy face different problems when it comes to contracting COVID-19. Women are more likely to face difficult and long-lasting health problems. Therefore, women are more likely to require long-term care and support. Women who are living with pre-existing health conditions depend on care from the family, friends, and neighbors being at risk during the pandemic. For older women living in residential facilities and requiring additional help, mew social distancing measures can lead to bigger chances of social exclusion separated from their family.
The second problem for the health sector is a recent vaccine development. Health care providers must ensure that their medical research includes both genders and does not impose further inequalities. Clinical trials of the vaccine have to be done with the gender-balanced representation in mind. The trial has to record the differences in the effect on the each gender. Insufficient gender research in vaccine development might carry lethal consequences. The following inequality had been sparked by women having a small representation among the health governance and decision-making which implies a lesser power in decision-making choices.
Women, occupying 76% of the healthcare sector, are lacking representation among senior doctors, professors, and executive health sector positions.
Division in the childcare responsibilities takes the third place. Amid the pandemic and closing schools, women became the ones taking responsibility for childcare. Before the Covid-19 outbreak, women in the EU spent 13 hours more than men every week on unpaid care. The outcome of the pandemic on the schools and workplaces is now forcing the workload taken by a woman to increase rapidly. The following situation can prove to be more difficult for single parents. Fathers being forced to work from home are more likely to take part in childcare rather than before. For single parents, it is a race between working from home and caring for a child alone. Single parents are also more likely to face a problem of poverty in contrast to those without children.
Women make up almost 85% of all single parents in the EU and almost half compared to single fathers. Covid-19 is likely to increase the risk of poverty or social exclusion of women.
Economic disbalance takes fourth place on the list of inequalities. International Labor Organization has estimated that almost 25 million jobs could be lost worldwide due to COVID-19, with up to 35 million additional people facing working poverty. Women, in the following situation, are more likely to occupy temporary, part-time employment. Temporary positions are high in numbers among young women, women with low qualifications, and migrant women. It is important to notice that part-time jobs usually have weaker employment benefits such as legal protection, pay, and social protection. Migrant workers are the second vulnerable group of domestic workers. Migrant domestic workers are employed as undeclared workers in the informal economy. Women, in the following situation, are highly dependent on the employer and work hours to support themselves.
Gender-basis violence is the fifth and last impact dividing the world right now. Violence at home became one of the bases of discrimination at the beginning of 2020. The reported rise in domestic violence is related to the limited social and institutional support for women. Women exposed to abuses for a long period of time are cut off from the rest of society due to ongoing pandemic. France saw a 32 % jump in domestic violence reports in just over a week. Lithuania observed 20 % more domestic violence reports over a three-week lockdown period than over the same period in 2019. Financial instability at the time of COVID-19 can be one of the reasons preventing women from seeking help and leaving abusers making the situation even more challenging.
What should be done to prevent the following situation from escalating further?
Every government has taken a different approach when supporting its citizens amid the pandemic. However, fighting gender inequality must become a part of countries’ responses to the crisis. There are some measures that should be implemented!
- Gender segregation in the labor market should be placed under control
- Challenges faced by the frontline workers need to be recognized
- Caretakers should receive a higher payment at the time of the crisis
- Women in health governance and decision-making need to be well represented
- Affordable and accessible childcare should be provided for parents who work in essential services
- Financial support for single parents should be provided to assist with childcare, rent payments, and other household expenses
- Social impact of the pandemic has to be thoroughly analyzed
- Part-time, flexible and other forms of non-standard employment should have a well-defined minimum wages
- Addressing the impact of Covid-19 on gender-based violence should become a priority
- Groups at higher risk of discrimination and social exclusion need to be identified and supported
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