This piece is written by Ana Julieta Teodoro Cleaver, social anthropologist, public policy and management officer (executive officer) since 2001, who is currently serving at the Brazilian Ministry of Economy. This article is one of the finalists in Apolitical’s 2020 women in government writing competition.

The coronavirus pandemic has ushered in a reality that would only have made sense in a fictional dystopia a year ago.

With it emerged not only a sanitary crisis, but an economic, social, environmental, and political crises as well. There are many intertwining issues therefore that have to be acknowledged and addressed to overcome the crisis’ systemic dimension.

Pre-existing racial, class, and gender inequalities were aggravated within this context. Moreover, women are more affected by the coronavirus crisis as they are overcharged with reproductive and care work, and make up most of professionals on the front line.

There is also the increase of domestic violence under lockdown, as well as the loss of work and consequent mental health deterioration. Women have, then, a key role in any public policy addressing such a complex and unexpected sequence of problems. Any response to the systemic crisis therefore has to centre its core on women.

I advocate for the gender mainstream perspective as a starting point. Furthermore, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are an example of this in action, which predate pandemic and may inspire a response to the current crisis.

The SDGs were adopted by the United Nations Member States, as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, to address poverty, environmental, and livelihood challenges. The SDGs are condensed into a matrix of 17 Goals, which together frame comprehensively the structural and existential problems we face as a planet.

The SDGs were approved in 2015. Around 5 years later, with the current pandemic, social inequalities are increasing all over the globe. The systemic crisis that emerged with the pandemic revealed the size of the social fracture and inequality in many countries. Governments are struggling to offer adequate responses, all the while their budgets are shrinking.

The World Bank “Nowcast of the Global Poverty Rate at the $1.90 Line, 2015–21”, indicates the worst setback in the efforts to end extreme poverty in 25 years, due to the Covid-19 crisis, climate change, and conflicts.

The inadequacies the coronavirus pandemic has exposed all over the world demands an urgent response, and it is an opportunity to re-found our societies on solidarity, social justice, not least among which is gender equality

The increasing poverty burdens women particularly in the current moment and challenges governments to act urgently. As so, poverty, unemployment, violence, sanitary and health conditions, conflicts, natural disasters, among other aspects, tend to affect women more than men, especially during subsequent economic recessions.

In fact, women are the most vulnerable population group in all societies, as a result of gender discrimination and exclusion. Other characteristics may also overlap gender as an object of oppression and discrimination, such as race, sexuality, religion, age, disability, origin, and migration.

More, women are in charge (and are often overcharged with) of the politics and the economy of care, managing their households, children, elder, and sick relatives.

It is worth ending by saying  that better conditions for women improve communities, because  they tend to leverage family and community conditions. Therefore, a reasonable public response to this crisis should focus on women as essential to effective recovery, strengthening gender equality and social justice.

Gender mainstreaming is, then, a methodology that brings women at the centre of a holistic and integrated policy set, as per the SDGs. Combining the public policy and gender mainstreaming cycles, through design, planning, and execution, allows adjusting public investment and action towards this half of humankind that has been excluded in a world designed for and by men, as Criado Perez demonstrated in her awarded book Invisible Women.

To have a recovery based on gender equality and social justice, governments need to adopt an integrated perspective while addressing different interrelated issues. Local evidence-based diagnosis and gender mainstreaming might inform sound holistic recovery plans in both developed and developing economies.

The inadequacies the coronavirus pandemic has exposed all over the world demands an urgent response, and it is an opportunity to re-found our societies on solidarity, social justice, not least among which is gender equality.

Policy and decision makers will have to be bold if they want to offer a systemic response to this systemic crisis. — Ana Julieta Teodoro Cleaver

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