Covid-19 Crisis Could Set Back a Generation of Women, U.N. Report Finds
27 November 2020 - 5:47AM
Dow Jones News
By James Hookway
The Covid-19 pandemic is squeezing working mothers out of the
world's labor pool in ways that could damage women's economic
prospects for years to come, according to a United Nations
study.
The primary reason in many countries is child care. The report,
from U.N. Women this week, said that at the peak of the lockdowns
earlier this year, 1.7 billion children were affected by school
closures. Some 224 million remain out of school, forcing many
families to decide who must predominantly look after the children.
"It is predominantly women -- often paid less and with less job
security than men -- who are sacrificing their careers," the study
found. In some countries, women do up to 11 times more work than
men caring for family members and neighbors, all of it unpaid.
Men are struggling, too. A study conducted by U.N. Women and the
International Labour Organization found that in 55
high-and-middle-income countries, some 29 million men lost or left
their jobs between the fourth quarter last year and the second
quarter of 2020. But that is roughly the same as the number of
women who lost or left their jobs, and given that there are
proportionately fewer women in the workforce to begin with, the
impact is higher.
The U.N.'s concern now is that many of these women might not
return to work at all, particularly in areas hard-hit by Covid-19,
such as Latin America, where the study found that 83 million women
are outside the labor force, up from 66 million before the
pandemic.
The U.S. has seen similar problems. Many lost American jobs were
in the service sector, including retail, food service and personal
care, which are heavily skewed toward female workers and
particularly vulnerable to the effects of lockdowns and other
social-distancing measures. The U.S. Labor Department found that
the number of women aged 25 to 54 participating in the workforce
dropped from 77% in January to 74% in May.
In many countries, women find themselves juggling a growing
share of child care and household chores, even if their partners
are working from home, too.
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, executive director of U.N. Women, said
earlier this week that women need to be front and center when
governments turn their attention to recovering from the economic
and social impact of Covid-19. "Already, the pandemic threatens to
erase decades of progress on gender equality and women's
empowerment," she said. "By 2030, there could be 121 women in
poverty for every 100 poor men globally, with the worst affected
being young women between the ages of 25 to 34 -- the age when many
are raising families."
Some countries have taken initial steps toward helping women
overcome the worst of what some economists refer to as the pink
recession.
Australia and Costa Rica took steps to help ensure that child
care services remained open during their lockdowns. Egypt, Georgia
and Morocco provided cash advances to women traders and
entrepreneurs, while European leaders focused on keeping schools
open this fall even if it meant shutting down many other parts of
their economies as Covid-19 infections began to rise again. British
Prime Minister Boris Johnson was among many who warned about the
economic burden placed on parents who must stay home to look after
children if schools failed to open after the summer.
"Keeping our schools closed a moment longer than absolutely
necessary is socially intolerable, economically unsustainable and
morally indefensible," he said in August.
Ms. Mlambo-Ngcuka is urging governments to do more as they try
to rebuild their economies, and this time to ensure women are able
to compete fairly with men by providing more child care and other
support.
Write to James Hookway at james.hookway@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 26, 2020 13:32 ET (18:32 GMT)
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