The gender dimension of COVID-19: a wake-up call for business
By Bathylle Missika, Head of Division – Networks, Partnerships and Gender, OECD Development Centre, and Mathias Vicherat Secretary General of Danone and co-chair of the OECD Development Centre’s EMnet Working Group on Sustainability
This blog is part of a series on tackling COVID-19 in developing countries. Visit the OECD dedicated page to access the OECD’s data, analysis and recommendations on the health, economic, financial and societal impacts of COVID-19 worldwide.
Although men seem to be hit harder by COVID-19 than women from a medical perspective, the economic and health impact on women is becoming increasingly severe as the disease spreads around the world, and may well prove particularly devastating in emerging and developing economies. When crafting responses and recovery plans, governments and businesses must pay special attention to how the pandemic and the resulting crisis affect women and girls and how to address their specific needs. This will be key to both containing the economic and social fallout of the crisis, but also to facilitating recovery.
Women are at the forefront of the battle against the pandemic as they make up almost 70% of the healthcare workforce, while being largely under-represented in leadership in the healthcare sector. Women also work in sectors largely impacted by the crisis such as the hospitality business or the garment industry, the latter employing 60 million workers around the world, nearly 75% of whom are women. For example, in Bangladesh, as brands and retailers declared force majeure and cancelled orders, about 1 million of the 4.1 million mostly women workers in the sector lost their jobs. Moreover, lockdowns worsen the risks of violence, exploitation, abuse or harassment against women. Finally, and most importantly from an economic perspective, women are disproportionately affected by the crisis due to their position on the margins of the economy. Indeed, nearly 60% of the world’s workers make their livelihoods in the informal economy, and in many of the world’s poorest countries, it is working women who are most likely to be found in informal employment. In Africa for example, 90% of employed women are in informal employment compared to 83% of men. Tens of millions of informal workers have already been affected by COVID-19. Many of these women will not be rescued by social safety nets, as access to benefits frequently depends on formal participation in the labour force. Continue reading “The gender dimension of COVID-19: a wake-up call for business”
Why representation is key to eliminating gender-based violence.
A friend told me recently, “While I am able to fight against the rules set for me and continue my struggle to do so, I feel helpless about my father and brothers. I realise and openly acknowledge how they have also been victims of rules and norms set by what we call “Patriarchy”. Unfortunately, the rules for them have remained unchanged, they seem to have been frozen in time.”
#MeToo has led to an unprecedented global calling out of men’s use of violence against women — whether harassment, sexual assault or intimate partner violence. In addition, the last 10 years have seen advances in legal protections for survivors of violence and a massive expansion of research on what works, and what does not, to prevent gender-based violence. With all of this, men’s voices and actions, as allies, actors, and as partners in preventing gender-based violence are often either missing or silent. First, we should start by saying what we mean by gender-based violence (GBV). The phrase, while useful and necessary, often leads us to overlook the fact that we are mostly talking about men’s violence against women – harassment, sexual assault, physical, sexual, economic intimate partner violence in the home by male partners against female partners, and sexual exploitation, among others.
The 2030 Agenda strengthens the prominence of international trade as both a goal of and a means to sustainable development. It also recognises the importance of Aid for Trade. Sweden, for one, is highly dedicated to these commitments and supportive of the Aid for Trade initiative. Additionally, as the Foreign Trade Minister of the world’s first officially feminist government, I use the WTO’s and EU’s free trade agreements as well as Aid for Trade as important platforms for pushing forward the gender equality agenda.