Equality has been casualty of pandemic
Here, Cerys Furlong, chief executive of gender equality charity Chwarae Teg, explains how the Covid pandemic has hit working women disproportionately hard
COVID-19 changed the way we live and work overnight and perhaps forever. Changes came suddenly and we found ourselves in the middle of a crisis that we couldn’t do anything about, other than stay home and socially distance ourselves.
We’ve seen time and again how the crisis did not fall equally.
Women, people of colour, disabled people and people on low incomes were all more vulnerable to the health and economic impacts of the crisis.
As schools and nurseries closed and informal childcare support became unavailable due to restrictions on household mixing, we saw additional childcare and homeschooling responsibilities fall overwhelmingly on women, putting them under additional pressure as they tried to balance work and care.
Chwarae Teg’s latest report, One Big Juggling Act, shows that women were left feeling exhausted, overwhelmed and undervalued as they tried to balance homeschooling and care alongside work.
For those of us familiar with the issues women continue to face, the fact that care overwhelmingly fell to women during the crisis will come as no surprise. However, the experiences that women across Wales shared with Chwarae Teg should provide new impetus to solving the childcare issue once and for all. If we want greater equality, inaction simply isn’t an option.
The experiences women faced during the pandemic and the lockdowns were the result of a number of factors. Gendered assumptions were made within households and by employers about who would be responsible for childcare and homeschooling. Inflexible working patterns made it difficult for women to have any kind of worklife balance. And a lack of women in decision-making at Welsh, UK and local levels – plus a failure to use tools that mainstream gender equality in policy-making – meant that the experiences, needs and challenges of diverse women were often overlooked as part of the crisis response.
As a result, policies such as furlough often failed to meet women’s needs and were far too slow to adapt once challenges came to light.
These issues are the result of a collective failure to address the root causes of gender inequality.
Gender stereotypes mean women are still seen as carers first.
We’ve accepted a precarious system of childcare that relies on women’s unpaid work for far too long. Work remains inflexible for many, creating tension with other responsibilities at home, and too many women entered the pandemic in a financially vulnerable position as a result of poverty, low pay and insecure work.
This is not a situation that we can allow to continue. As we, hopefully, near the end of the pandemic and look towards recovery, we must ensure that any further restrictions do not disadvantage women and we must prioritise action to address the persistent inequality that left women more vulnerable in the first place.
To ensure that women are not disadvantaged by future Covid restrictions or lockdowns, there must be access to childcare support wherever possible, either through informal support networks or formal childcare. Gender balance and diversity should also be required at decision-making levels in all governmental crisis response teams and gender mainstreaming tools should be used to ensure women’s experiences and needs are considered.
To address the underlying causes that left women at greater risk during the pandemic, we must place care at the heart of our recovery and invest to deliver free, universal childcare to all children aged 0-4. We must tackle poverty and financial hardship,
ensure everyone has access to flexible and inclusive work, and make sure that policy-making takes account of diverse women’s needs and experiences through more diverse representation and gender mainstreaming.
Inequality left far too many people at unacceptable risk to the negative impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. We have the ability to make sure that this is not the case in any future crises. But only if there is the will to recognise and tackle the structural causes of inequality. We know what the problems are and we know what many of the solutions are. Those of us in decision-making positions have a responsibility to make sure that action is taken.