Road to gender parity: UN points out post-Covid recovery priorities
Gender equality symbol.
What you need to know:
- The number of women estimated to have lost all incomes as a result of the virus was found to be 1.6 times higher than that of their male counterparts.
- Many women reported an increase in care work, tension at the workplace and a sense of financial inadequacy.
Irene Auma had just returned home in Ugunja, Siaya County, from Uganda when President Uhuru Kenyatta announced movement restrictions to contain Covid-19.
The announcement caught her unawares and by surprise as she never thought the infection was that serious.
“I had just bought goods worth $500 (about Sh59,000) from Uganda to sell in my stall on the market. All my goods perished; there was nothing to sell. Besides, there were police everywhere, so traders could not attempt to sell,” she told the UN Women Kenya team.
Ms Auma’s predicament mirrors that of thousands of other women in business who were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. According to a study conducted last year by UN Women Kenya, Covid-19 disrupted livelihoods for many, particularly low-income households.
The number of women estimated to have lost all incomes as a result of the virus was found to be 1.6 times higher than that of their male counterparts. Many women reported an increase in care work, tension at the workplace and a sense of financial inadequacy.
Unpaid care work
The study ascertained that a higher proportion of women than men spent time in unpaid care work. This may have led many of them to exit the labour market, increased their stress levels, or took its toll on their mental health.
Covid-19, which broke out in 2020, rapidly hurt women more than men. Since the start of the pandemic, several surveys done by different organisations have shown that seven in 10 women admitted being abused by a partner.
And based on survey results from 16 countries, women, in 2020, did 29 per cent more childcare per week than men.
It is for these and many other gender disparities witnessed since the onset of Covid-19 that the UN Women and UNDP have identified key priorities to be addressed in the recovery efforts to enhance gender equality.
Support for lobbies
The UN agencies, in a report, have made recommendations to governments to ensure gender equality. They are rooting for the support of feminist movements and women’s rights organisations, noting that such pressure groups play important roles as advocates, watchdogs and service providers, especially during crises of all kinds.
“The early and persistent alarm bells rung by feminists about the ‘shadow pandemic’ of violence against women and girls translated into concrete policy outcomes,” the report reads.
The agencies say their analysis found that countries with the strongest feminist movements before the pandemic adopted, on average, three more measures to address such violence than those with weak movements, independent of national income.
Expansion of women’s representation and leadership is also part of the recommended priorities. “Our report shows that independent of national income, countries with stronger democracies or higher women’s representation in parliaments adopted a higher number of gender-sensitive measures than countries without those features.”
The agencies also want governments to increase investment that promotes resilience to future shocks. They note that successful response starts before a crisis, arguing countries with robust public service and gender-responsive social protection systems could rely on these structures to roll out support faster and more effectively.
Harnessing technologies
They have also underscored the need to harness digital technologies, noting that in an increasingly online world, digital tools hold major potential for activists and governments alike. At the height of the Covid-19, such technologies sustained feminist activism online while enabling policy innovations and rapid support roll-out, reaching groups of women often left behind in ‘normal times’.
More than 100 countries, including Japan, Sri Lanka and Uganda, used digital tools to adapt hotlines and psychosocial support to survivors of violence. Strengthening of data and evidence on gender during crises and beyond also features as a priority to spur gender parity. The agencies hold that real-time data on the pandemic’s gendered impact is critical to making the case for gender-sensitive recovery measures, and tracking what worked in responses.
The report draws its proposals from the global dataset of close to 5,000 Covid-19 response measures adopted by 226 countries and territories.
A 2020 UN Women report noted that in the previous 12 months, 243 million women and girls aged 15 to 49 across the world had been subjected to sexual or physical violence by an intimate partner. Covid-19 containment measures exacerbated women’s and girls’ exposure to gender-based violence (GBV). Kenya’s national GBV hotline,1195, received an increase of 25 per cent complaints in September 2020, compared to the month prior.
Another study by the Centre for Rights Education and Awareness showed that women in five counties experienced an increase in intimate partner violence since the onset of Covid-19.
Forms of violence
Women in Nairobi, Isiolo, Mombasa, Kilifi and Narok counties, where the study was conducted, said the frequency and severity of violence from their partners had increased since the first case of the virus was announced in the country in March 2020. They cited physical violence, which includes beating, hitting, and slapping, as the commonest form of violence they experienced.
The study—conducted between June 2021 and July 2021 and launched in December last year—also shows other common forms as emotional violence, which includes abuse, humiliation threats and sexual violence (forced or unwanted sexual intercourse).
In the report titled Women’s Experiences on Intimate Partner Violence during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, economic violence also features prominently, with women indicating their men have been refusing to give money for basic family needs and misusing the limited family resources available.
To tame the increasing GBV cases, the study has recommended the national and county governments allocate additional resources to response plans and integrate violence prevention and response policies, plans and budgets. It also recommended the inclusion of policies to protect survivors in their contingency plans and ensure that intimate partner violence, prevention, response and risk mitigation activities are part of a specific objective in all current and future funding appeals.
