Progressive men cannot just ignore gender’s part in inequality

Feminist thinking is vital to making sure the economy works for everyone, writes Laura Waddell

During Covid, the skeleton structure of society has shown its bones. It has always been there. But the importance of work across the care sector, domestic sphere, and in grocery retail has never been more acutely apparent. No matter what else has been stripped back from our everyday functioning ecomony, these things have remained essential – literally designated so.

With this comes the realisation that the kind of work all of society tangibly depends upon is among the lowest paid. This is old news, but rarely is the principle so starkly illustrated across the nation. Will the sentiment convert to swings in political sympathies once the clapping stops? I imagine, at least, that lobbyists for privitisation are having fraught discussions about stopping the bottle back up.

Yesterday a joint report from Scottish feminist policy groups Close the Gap and Engender was published, making the case for a gendered strategy in rebuilding the economy post-covid.

The Gender & Economic Recovery report reasserts that equality is good for economic growth (this is generally accepted, if not so much asserted by actions, by financial bodies and several of the Scottish Govenment’s own strategies) but that, in contradiction, essential domestic and care work continues to be overlooked as a contributor to the economy. “Women’s work in care, cleaning, catering, retail, and clerical roles has for too long been undervalued, underpaid, and underprotected.”

Now is an ideal time to act on these principles of inclusive growth by building gender into any post-covid economic recovery plan, as well as reassessing what economic growth outcomes should actually look like in a progressive nation. If anything is to change, bold policy will always be necessary. Politically, it helps that the public are newly attuned to the care sector and how essential it truly is.

The problem is that women remain worst off in times of boom and bust, with workforces overwhelmingly made up of women clustering around the bottom of each income bracket, as well as taking on the bulk of unpaid work. As the report states, “Gender-sensitive inclusive growth is about the pattern of growth and not its rate. Repatterning growth means seeing the poorest women’s income rise both along with the poorest men’s and also relative to men’s as a group.”

Clearly, the accounting alone is failing to tell the full story. The proposal to include “gendered wellbeing indicators” alongside GDP as a barometer of growth is a good one.

The report also argues for investment in a “care economy” and calls for wage-setting powers to increase pay. “Care is as essential to our economy as bricks, steel, and fibre-optic cable. Investment in childcare and care for disabled people and older people should be considered as necessary infrastructure for a sustainable well-being economy and a good society.”

As mentioned, the Scottish Government is committed to inclusive growth in principle, like many other nations and organisations, but the report is critical of its “trickle down”-style outcomes. “It conceives of [inclusive growth] mostly as sharing out the spoils of growth, rather than reconceptualising how growth might be created. Growth itself is not acknowledged as a gendered process.” The report is critical of equality findings used as analysis afterwards, rather than shap