Gender equality and the impact of COVID-19: Articles

Another generation of women will have to wait for gender parity, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2021. As the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to be felt, closing the global gender gap has increased by a generation from 99.5 years to 135.6 years.

Le « Plan féministe » cartographie les politiques ambitieuses et transformatrices relatives aux moyens de subsistance, aux soins et à l'environnement qui sont nécessaires pour construire un avenir plus équitable et durable. Pour y parvenir, il appelle à des approches politiques spécifiques au contexte, à des stratégies politiques adaptées et à un financement. Le plan identifie les leviers clés qui peuvent créer un changement ainsi que les actrices et acteurs aux niveaux mondial, national et local qui doivent prendre des mesures pour avancer vers cette vision.

This article argues that the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting women more heavily than men not only at the physical level of work (e.g. women are reducing more paid work hours than men), but also through increasing the division regarding the cognitive level of work (e.g. women are more worried about childcare work while men are about paid work). These developments can potentially contribute to a future widening of the gender wage gap during the recovery process.

The on-going COVID-19 pandemic has generated negative socio-economic consequences for women and girls at many levels. Many are facing a surge in gender-based violence, exacerbated by conditions of confinement, overcrowding and growing socio-economic insecurity. Despite various lockdowns, women continue to be at the forefront of the struggle, carrying out essential tasks in their capacities as nurses, midwives, domestics, janitorial workers and care-takers. Although they are risking their own health and safety, the work they perform continues to be undervalued and underpaid.

In 112 countries that reported sex-disaggregated data on COVID-19 cases, men showed an overall higher infection rate than women, and an even higher mortality rate. However, women’s relatively high representation in sectors hardest hit by lockdown orders has translated into larger declines in employment for women than men in numerous countries. Evidence also indicates that stay-at-home orders have increased unpaid care workloads, which have fallen disproportionately to women. Further, domestic violence has increased in frequency and severity across countries.

This policy brief confirms that women’s employment has been negatively impacted in terms of both quantity and quality, although with substantial regional variations. It provides a snapshot of new and continuing measures that governments have adopted to mitigate the employment and income effects of the pandemic, while warning that they are already leaving women behind. Finally, it calls for gender-responsive policies, in order to make women’s right to work and their labour rights a central feature of the COVID-19 recovery.

The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis didn’t unravel new discrepancies between men and women, it just shone a brighter light on already-existing gaps and issues, all of which can be corrected in the aftermath of the lockdown. It is recommended to improve availability of care which limits women’s labor force participation, including alternative forms of childcare.

The current COVID-19 crisis, with its associated school and daycare closures as well as social-distancing requirements, has the potential to magnify gender differences both in terms of childcare arrangements within the household and at work. This article finds that women have carried a heavier load than men in the provision of childcare during the COVID-19 crisis, even while still working. Mothers’ current working situations appear to have a limited influence on their provision of childcare.

Acknowledging the need for more gender work in Public Administration, this paper engages feminist standpoint theory to analytically frame the outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic from a feminist perspective. By assessing the differential impact of the pandemic on women and men in the United States across several sectors of the political economy and society, it is apparent women face immense obstacles in the labor market, as well as in access to health, food and housing. The imperative to include women's perspectives in pandemic response and planning is juxtaposed against the current pandemic response that primarily leaves women out of the decision-making process.

The recession shadowing the COVID-19 pandemic has been frequently characterised as a “shecession,” implying disproportionately negative effects for women. Yet the crisis might more accurately be called a “momcession,” as women’s work losses were driven in large part by the outcomes of mothers specifically. These findings serve as another reminder that governments must consider inequalities in unpaid work and take a gender-sensitive approach when building their policy responses to the COVID-19 crisis.

The shared response to the COVID‐19 crisis demonstrates that the vast majority of society believes human wellbeing — not economic growth — should be at the centre of policy. COVID‐19 exposes the foundational role of care work, both paid and unpaid, to functioning societies and economies. Focusing on ‘production’ instead of the sustainable reproduction of human life devalues care work and those who perform it. Women’s physical and mental health, and the societies that rely on them, are at stake.

By now most of us have experienced firsthand how the new coronavirus, COVID-19, impacts our lives. Pre-existing gender gaps may intensify the adverse effects of COVID-19. In fact, there is a high risk that gender inequalities will widen during and after the pandemic and that gains in women’s and girls’ accumulation of human capital, economic empowerment, and voice and agency, painstakingly built over the past decades, will be reversed.

The COVID-19 pandemic is harming health, social and economic well-being worldwide, with women at the centre. First and foremost, women are leading the health response: women make up almost 70% of the health care workforce, exposing them to a greater risk of infection. At the same time, women are also shouldering much of the burden at home, given school and child care facility closures and longstanding gender inequalities in unpaid work. Women also face high risks of job and income loss, and face increased risks of violence, exploitation, abuse or harassment during times of crisis and quarantine.

With the COVID-19 outbreak imposing stay at home and social distancing policies, warnings about the impact of lockdown and its economic consequences on domestic violence has surged. This paper disentangles the effect of forced coexistence and economic stress on intimate partner violence. Results indicate that the impact of economic consequences is twice as large as the impact of lockdown. It also finds a large increase of domestic violence when the relative position of the man worsens, especially in contexts where that position was already being threatened.

Stay-at-home policies due to the Covid-19 pandemic have drastically increased housework and childcare. During the lockdown, couples were harshly challenged by this novel situation which could notably redistribute roles and/or could also lead to intrahousehold conflicts. This paper uses individual data collected from an online survey on partnered women in France during the confinement of the 2020 Spring to investigate the lockdown's effects on the household chores allocation and tensions in the couple. It shows that the lockdown did not offer an opportunity to strongly renegotiate the housework and childcare division between the partners, as women still did the lion's share during this period.

The lockdown led to a large increase in childcare and housework, given the closing of schools and the inability to outsource. This article finds that men increased their participation in housework and childcare slightly, but most of the burden fell on women, who were already doing most of the housework before the lockdown. Overall, it finds that the covid-19 crisis appears to have increased gender inequalities in both paid and unpaid work in the short-term.

This article explores the gendered realities of work–life balance in Iceland during the COVID‐19 pandemic, in particular how these societal changes reflect and affect the gendered division of unpaid labor, such as childcare and household chores. The findings imply that, during the pandemic, the mothers took on greater mental work than before. They also described intense emotional labor, as they tried to keep everyone calm and safe.

School closures, massive rates of job loss and furloughing, and a shift to working from home are all affecting how parents spend their time, and how mothers and fathers divide responsibilities for paid work, housework and childcare.

This brief highlights emerging evidence of the impact of the recent global pandemic of COVID-19 on violence against women and girls. It makes recommendations to be considered by all sectors of society, from governments to international organizations and to civil society organizations, in order to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls, at the onset, during, and after the public health crisis, with examples of actions already taken. It also considers the economic impact of the pandemic and its implications for violence against women and girls in the long term.

The coronavirus crisis is different from known economic crises of the past. First, this time it is affecting industries previously less prone to crisis and in which more women work, meaning the highest developed and richest countries in the world are also deeply hit. This analysis formulates answers on how to support women and how women can support the recovery from the coronavirus economic crisis.

Malgré les progrès réalisés durant le XXe20ème siècle, les inégalités entre les sexes restent importantes en France. Depuis les années 1990, les inégalités professionnelles ne se réduisent plus et les tâches familiales et domestiques sont toujours majoritairement réalisées par les femmes. Ces inégalités s’articulent avec d’autres formes d’inégalités et de discriminations, en particulier sociales, territoriales et ethniques. La crise sanitaire de la Covid-19 et les mesures qui l’ont accompagnée ont révélé, et parfois renforcé, ces inégalités structurelles.

This article examines the coping strategies of individuals during the confinement in France using a sensemaking lens. The findings reveal two patterns in the ways men and women cope with their experiences during the COVID‐19 pandemic. The first pattern shows intensification of gender performativity manifested in the reproduction of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ reactions to the crisis. The second pattern detects a tendency towards a gradual deflection from gender performances through mental improvisations that foster new awareness of the crisis presenting an opportunity to transcend traditional gender roles.

While women appear to be more resilient than men to COVID-19 in terms of health outcomes, that is not the case when it comes to the economic and social fallout. Measures taken by governments to control the spread of the virus are exacerbating gender divides in unemployment, domestic labour and financial security, all to the disadvantage of women. Meanwhile, work–life conflict is escalating as people work from home, with mothers of small children often bearing the brunt of the impact.