


Michele Ogilvie
Jan 6, 2022
Worldwide
Categories:
Women, Economy, Women's Rights
TIME, in an article dated April 20, 2021, reports the COVID-19 pandemic has similarly affected millions of women worldwide, excluding them from participating in the economy. The pandemic has also increased the burden of unpaid labor on women. School closures forced millions to leave jobs to take care of children. COVID decimated the hospitality, retail, and care-work industries, often the leading employers for women. Globally, women lost twice as many jobs because of COVID-19 than men, according to the McKinsey Global Institute.
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, María Teresa Arzamendia began working night shifts. The 40-year-old says she had been employed by the owners of a gluten-free bakery in western Buenos Aires for four years, three of them off the books. Her employer's flexibility allowed her and her partner to divide caring for their daughters, then ages 2 and 7, while schools were closed. For the first month or so, they got by.
But in April 2020, the couple split up, complicating childcare. And then, in August, Arzamendia was laid off when the bakery closed due to the pandemic. It reopened a month later, but they never hired her back. She claims her employer let go only female workers and used her as an example, citing her need for flexibility around childcare. "Women in Argentina tend to take care of everything at home and with the kids," says Arzamendia. "In the past year, if you're a woman and you have children, you just don't fit into the labor market." She is suing the bakery owners for keeping her employment off the books. (The bakery's owner told TIME that Arzamendia had never been employed at their current business and had last worked for them at a different bakery that closed in 2019.)
A report by the World Economic Forum estimates that the pandemic added 36 years to the time it will take to close the global gender gap. It will now take an average of 135.6 years to reach parity between women and men for economic opportunity, political power, education, and health.
In Argentina, women:
Have a lower level of economic activity (48%) than men (71%), since household chores compete with wage-earning jobs.
Perform 76% of unpaid household chores, with an average of 6.4 hours per day
earn less than men, with a salary gap of 28%.
Under the age of 29 women exceed 23% unemployment.
But it is Argentina that has rolled out more gender-sensitive COVID-response measures than any other country, according to the U.N. In Argentina, the Ministry of Economy focuses on gender equality from an economic point of view. Minister Martín Guzmán appointed Mercedes D'Alessandro to run this new area. D'Alessandro says that "poverty is sexist" and that "inequality is strongly expressed in terms of gender." "It is women, transvestites, and transgenders who suffer from the worst conditions of employment and earn lower salaries."
Argentina's economy, long trapped in a cycle of boom and bust, was struggling even before the pandemic and shrank by nearly 10% in 2020. Despite the challenges, D'Alessandro is pushing to use government recovery efforts to make the economy work better for women like Arzamendia:
Expanding care infrastructure.
Getting more women into male-dominated industries and vice versa.
Adding more flexibility for parents to work remotely.
Women throughout the world are very often the homemakers and bread earners, whereas men generally are the bread earners only. The case for incorporating women into the economy is evident. Analysts at McKinsey say doing so would increase global GDP (gross domestic product) in 2030 by $13 trillion. For D'Alessandro, there's also a moral element. The past year underscores how essential women's labor is to the economy, from unpaid care work to frontline health care roles. D'Alessandro says governments owe it to women. "Without all the work that women did this year, there'd be no economy to rebuild."
The woman as a bread earner is secondary in much of our world's cultures. Overcoming cultural norms that hold women back will take time and willpower, and victories will likely be small incremental steps. The commonality across all nations with different attitudes towards women's rights is organization. The collective voice of women (and the men who support them) can change legislation, overcome cultural barriers and erase violence against women. It can also break down workplace barriers and ceilings and create new companies and institutions when conventional means fail to deliver results. The challenges and opportunities for change are complex given the wide-ranging societal views of women worldwide. We can lead from our place and find meaningful steps to help. Are you willing?
Source:
Source:

Catalog #:
1121.100.01.010622