As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, social scientists and economists are realizing how the past two years have affected gender. Women and men have experienced the pandemic differently, but in what way?The pandemic has claimed lives and livelihoods. It has exerted great pressure. on health, wealth and well-being around the world.
But although everyone spent it together, the consequences and effects of the pandemic were not the same for everyone.
Mel: Welcome to the fifth episode of the poverty podcast. Today I am joined by Miriam Muller, global social scientist on poverty and equity, and Javier Romero, an economist who is running in global on poverty and equity for Latin America and the Caribbean and the gender innovation laboratory in the region.
They join us in telling us what we’ve learned so far about how COVID has affected men and women in other dimensions of gender equality. Our discussion today is based on Miriam’s article, Gender and COVID-19: What have we learned a year?After? And Javier’s article, The Gender Impacts of COVID-19 on Labor Markets in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Miriam based her studies on a review of global evidence related to gender and COVID, while Javier based his studies on family surveillance analysis, knowledge of telephone surveys in LAC. Miriam, Javier, thank you so much for being with us today. So, addressing you, Miriam, how has COVID-19 affected men and women differently?
Miriam: We take a look at aptitude in education, economic opportunities, and then the company or strength to make decisions. And I think in an abstract sentence, you can say that men are more likely to lose their lives due to COVID, yet women have lost more than men in terms of jobs, income, security. So, very briefly, if you take a look at fitness, men have been the net losers. Thus, mortality rates and infection rates have been consistently higher among men than among women in all countries and regions. In some contexts, exposure to infection may be somewhat predetermined through the social roles that women and men play. What are the gender norms in those countries where women and men socialize?To what extent are they provided in public space, etc. I think social norms, gender roles also greatly influence what we observe?
Mel: But your article also shows that while men have suffered more from the direct fitness effects of COVID-19, women’s fitness has suffered in other ways.
Miriam: Stress, worry, mental consequences have been more common among women in countries where we have knowledge. In some countries, Armenia, Pakistan, I recall, and Senegal, knowledge was collected on these facets, and it was a very clear process that the physical condition of women in these facets had been more affected.
Mel: So what emerges from your review of the evidence so far is that the COVID-19 pandemic has reversed progress in many dimensions for women, yet it is in the economic sphere where women have lost the most. Gender mattered more than education, location or generation. Women were more likely to lose their jobs in the first few months of the crisis. The greatest effects were seen in sectors where women are overrepresented. paintings in sectors such as tourism, hospitality and retail. Sectors that, in many countries, employ the majority of women. Javier Romero now talks about the explicit economic effects in the Latin American and Caribbean region.
Javier: What we see is that women were 44% more likely than men to avoid running at the beginning of the crisis. And we also located that this effect persisted at least six months after the pandemic began. One of them fears sectors in which women are overrepresented. Many of those sectors didn’t just adapt to pass with social distancing measures, such as stores and services, etc. These are the types of tasks that are becoming most affected in a socially remote world. Then you also have disorders with the quality of the task. Some women, once again, are over-represented in the portfolio of self-employed, casual staff, unpaid staff. Who also fear the safety of the task this pandemic.
Mel: In addition to being more likely to lose their jobs than men, women have also faced a damaging end result of the pandemic and its lockdowns: domestic and gender-based violence. Because it is such a sensitive issue, gender-based violence is a complicated size to measure and download data.
To this end, the World Bank reviewed reports on the backlog of calls to helplines, police, registries, and other service providers. Gender-based violence has transparent long-term implications for women, their youth and society at large.
Javier, can you tell us a little more about the long-term dangers than you’ve noticed so far?
Javier: The dangers of the long-term effects on gender equality, not only for the Latin American region, I think in general, on a global scale, we get involved in that. One of them, and the most apparent one we have been able to measure, is participation in the labour market and employment.
The progress that has been made in the last 3 decades, in LAC, and for several decades in the world in general, we can go backwards and that means women out of work or women in lower quality jobs, not to mention violence. . Violence against women has all kinds of effects and can also have intergenerational effects.
He is not only the victim of violence, but also the young people of that home, if any. We also want to think about those implications and whether there are also effects on education. If there are effects on the accumulation of human capital, especially for women, this can mean a decrease in wages in the long run and can mean a decrease in economic returns for women. There are a variety of possible long-term consequences. But I want to emphasize that we want to think about how to avoid those negative long-term consequences and turn them into inclusive growth.
Mel: Now, Miriam, do you have any ideas about the long-term effects?
Miriam: What we’ve noticed so far with the knowledge we have is that the overall gaps that preceded the pandemic have widened. So, to simplify as much as possible the countries where women’s participation in the labor market or in economic activity was a big problem, you see those gaps widening, gender-based violence increasing, etc. In all other dimensions of gender equality, we have noticed that the progress we have noticed over the past decade is not stalling, but eroding. So I think there’s a really extensive threat, in fact, that will have long-term consequences if we don’t respond properly.
And I think what’s also vital to register here is that so far we’ve only talked about women and men in general, but we haven’t, and what’s complicated because most of the time we don’t have good enough data, we haven’t talked at all about the differences between women or between men.
So how do the limitations of women and men overlap differently?Among indigenous women, women from rural areas, etc. ?Other layers of inequality can truly intersect with gender, and I think that’s where we literally want to focus our long-term attention on the policy response.
Mel: When it comes to poverty in vulnerable groups, more women than men internationally live on $1. 90 a day or less, according to a 2018 World Bank report. The same report found that 122 women over the age of 25 to 34 lived in deficient families for each and every hundred men in the same age group.
According to this report, not all members of the same family report the same degrees of deprivation and therefore the same point of poverty. Evidence shows that vulnerable groups, such as women, children, the elderly or other people with disabilities, face greater deprivation in a family.
Javier, how do you see the dating between gender gaps and poverty?
Javier: I think the relationship between gfinisher gaps and poverty is that it can lead to suboptimal end results for society. That is, maximum maximum probably. Think of society and have a giant subgroup that doesn’t have equivalent access to opportunities or equivalent access to producing wages or equivalent access to productivity and innovation or voices of political participation. It is very likely that we lack a lot of potential talent, then prospective and prospective salaries. It is very likely that due to the gfinisher gaps, we will end up with a useless balance, a suboptimal result.
Mel: As Javier and Miriam have already said, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated gender gaps.
As we dig deeper, we also find gaps within each gender group, women around the world vary from each other. even within the same gender group. As gender intersects with other sociodemographic characteristics, such as age, race, income, ethnicity and location.
It is about taking these characteristics into account when portraying a more accurate picture of gender disparities in an express context. If we can respond temporarily to gaps, we will face suboptimal outcomes for society.
What can Javier do?
Javier: Some countries, not all, but some countries, many will have already established money transfers aimed at women, especially women with children. This is a population that we would possibly need to reorient during the pandemic due to issues of lack of food confidence. that have been brought by other people because they have an effect on the works due to the loss of income. We already know that these are vulnerable groups. We can also point to the records that already exist, but this is not the case in all countries. Some countries can’t do that. And possibly we would have to think a little more blatantly and think, okay, we could possibly point to a kind of painter fast where we know that women would possibly be overrepresented, for example, casual staff or freelancers or insurance. Do we have the capacity, in some countries, to target those sectors and make a bigger social security policy in those areas?
Possibly we would also like to think about tactics to revive businesses and incentivize fast sectors, where women, once again, can be placed for credit, by supporting women entrepreneurs. But in the medium and long term, I think we want to think about how the pandemic has taught us that we want to create more jobs for women in general.
If we believe there is a possibility of women falling into education, then we want to target that because we know it has implications for long-term wages. We know we have implications for long-term agents, etc.
Mel: As the COVID pandemic widens gender gaps, we will begin to feel the effects unless swift action is taken to counter the damage. Miriam and Javier discussed the importance of an inclusive recovery from this pandemic.
According to her research, informed policymaking will serve to recover from gender disparities and expand the vulnerability of women and men. A strong and inclusive recovery cannot be achieved if expressed wishes and interests are overlooked and proactively addressed. in combination to fill those gaps.
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