How Covid-19 has affected the lives of women

This post is written by Alejandra Mora Mora, Executive Secretary of the Inter-American Commission of Women (CIM/OAS).

• The problem: Covid-19 has deepened pre-existing gender inequalities in our societies, resulting in a step backwards in women’s rights.

• Why it matters: Protecting women and girls from violence and ensuring their equal participation in public spaces creates positive social and economic impacts.

• The solution: States, in collaboration with local communities, must commit to designing public policies with intersectional gender perspectives.

From the beginning of the pandemic, the Inter-American Commission of Women (CIM), among other actors, warned that the impacts of Covid-19 would not affect women and men in the same way, and therefore, the responses could not be gender-neutral. The pandemic has not only deepened pre-existing gender inequalities, but has also resulted in a step backwards in terms of women’s rights. Input from the Ministry of Women (or equivalent), independent experts, and women's organisations provides a specialized and multiplying voice for gender in crisis mitigation and recovery policies at all levels.

"There is no doubt that the pandemic has negatively impacted all members of society, creating setbacks that states will have to deal with for years to come."

The CIM, with the objective of supporting the Organization of American States (OAS) Member States, has presented a series of publications on the effects and challenges of the pandemic and actions to be taken in order to develop recovery policies that respond to the needs of women. These documents make up the compendium Covid-19 in the Lives of Women: Towards a New Gender Pact, with chapters on recognising the differentiated impacts of the pandemic with a gender focus, the global caregiving emergency, care as an investment, new patterns of violence, and rural women.

There is no doubt that the pandemic has negatively impacted all members of society, creating setbacks that states will have to deal with for years to come. However, as a historically marginalised group, women have been disproportionately affected by Covid-19 both in and outside of the home (Covid-19 in Women’s Lives: Reasons to Recognize the Differential Impacts). For example, the gender gap in labour markets was aggravated as many women switched to part-time work or left the labour market altogether in order to balance childcare and other caregiving responsibilities. This situation will have an enormous impact on women's lives, as it will push us back into the private sphere, increase the time spent on care, postponing other areas, and many will be giving up productive formal work. To illustrate, in 2021, one in three women stated that they had considered downshifting their career or leaving the workforce, compared with one in four who said this at the outset of the pandemic, according to McKinsey & Company.

Areas to address

The CIM considers this to be a global caregiving emergency and highlights five structural areas that states must address: Caregiving as a right, Caregiving as a job in the value chain, Caregiving as an essential social service, Caregiving as collective - in which men have co-responsibility, and Caregiving as a crosscutting concept (The Global Care Emergency).

The CIM advocates placing caregiving at the centre of a new social pact that redefines it as a responsibility of the state, the family, businesses and the community. Moreover, Care as an Investment argues for addressing care as an investment in the short, medium and long term through the recognition of unpaid work as work and the acknowledgement of caregiving as a social and economic investment and an integral part of value chains.

"Covid-19 has exacerbated existing gender inequalities, differentially impacted rural women, resulted in increased cases of domestic and intimate partner violence, and widened the gap between women and men."

In addition to the unequal distribution of caregiving work, the pandemic resulted in a global increase in domestic violence and intimate partner violence, which has been attributed to an increase in tensions in households, increased perpetrator's risk factors for violence, economic burden, and survivors' limited access to support services available before the Covid-19 crisis (Usta, Murr and El Jarrah. In Violence against Women and the Measures to Contain the Spread of Covid-19, the CIM contends that states should create public policies to prevent and address violence against women and girls, improve their access to justice, and strengthen existing institutions and their capacity to respond to this crisis.

Where the problem is worse

Rural women face a series of additional obstacles brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic. These complications include higher rates of malnutrition, the disappearance of public services in poor rural communities, and food chain disruption which particularly affects small-scale producers. In Rural Women, Agriculture and Sustainable Development in the Americas in the Context of Covid-19, the CIM calls for the recognition of rural women’s contribution to food sovereignty and security in the Americas. It also highlights the opportunity OAS Member States have to build fairer societies based on new approaches to consumption and commitments based on an intersectional gender perspective.

Covid-19 has exacerbated existing gender inequalities, differentially impacted rural women, resulted in increased cases of domestic and intimate partner violence, and widened the gap between women and men in terms of time poverty due to household responsibilities and participation in the formal workforce. The CIM has published a series of documents that offer public policy suggestions on all these topics. The publications can be read individually, but have also been compiled in the compendium COVID-19 in the Lives of Women: Towards a New Gender Pact.

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