Pandemics affect women and men differently. According to recent studies, women will face greater inequalities due to economic fallouts, distribution of housework,
childcare and migration
Coronavirus is a disaster for feminism. A pandemic magnifies all existing inequalities, and in a sick patriarchal society, gender bias will be even more highlighted. According to The Guardian, the impact of pandemic on women’s rights may be the biggest leap backward for women in history. Women must be protagonists in the management of this emergency situation as their leadership and voice must be taken into account without disparagement and delay. However, on actual governing bodies, the presence of women is far from being balanced. This gender bias will have an impact in the medium or long term on their professional expectations and even on a billion decrease of the global GDP.
Women in frontline
According to UN women, 70% of the personnel in the social health sector are women, doing up to three times more unpaid care work. Women are the big majority in unpaid domestic care work, cleaning services and sanitary workforce who found themselves on the frontline of all essential services and functions during the Covid-19 pandemic. Three out of four sanitary workers on the frontline to Covid-19 infections are women and by May 2020 (when coronavirus peaks were higher) 77% of all infected frontline workers were also women. This doesn’t just make women more exposed to the virus infection, but it also hinders the compatibility with other professional and personal tasks and puts them into bigger risks of irregular migration, sexual exploitation and human trafficking. Invisible works such as household employees, sex and temporary workers have been the most punished of all. According to El País, around 26 thousand Guatemalan sex workers went excluded of social programs to copse with the covid-19 crisis.
Migrant women
The World Bank estimates that this crisis will push 60 million people into extreme poverty. Millions are losing their jobs, businesses are failing and poorer countries feel the burnt. In the majority of third world countries, people living in poverty conditions couldn’t implement safety measures such as social distancing, quarantining and running water. The response to the lack of opportunities leaves the world into a bigger migrant movement. Migrant and refugee women will face even more difficulties than other collectives because they tend to be excluded from prevention systems and social protection: during the covid-19 crisis migrants have been facing huge limits on their access to basic sanitation and income. From all the UN-listed specific risks that the pandemic has entailed for the migrant population, particularly for women, are job insecurity, xenophobic rejection, greater insecurity against the virus, overload care of work and an increased gender-based violence. This doesn’t just impact women’s life but the life of all who depend on them: children and older people.
People wait in line to receive food at a Los Angeles Regional Food Bank distribution during the coronavirus pandemic on April 9, 2020 in Van Nuys, California, USA.
Mario Tama / Getty Images
The solution
In an attempt to cope with all these inequalities, the UN Women issued a report about how to incorporate women and gender bias into the management of the crisis. On their recommendations, ensuring access to safe facilities, provide bonuses and protection equipment, facilitate access to multisectorial services and ensuring access to care services without discrimination are necessary actions we must take as a response to ensure the Covid-19 doesn’t discriminate who it affects. Women have been fighting for their rights for almost two hundred years, yet suffered inequality since we have registered history of societies. Now that the world’s basic functions need to be re-thought, let’s not take a leap backwards on feminism and let’s face this crisis with a gender perspective.
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