The impact of COVID19 is hardest on women. The pandemic amplifies the entrenched inequality on women’s health, safety, and economic security. One of the most immediate effects of the lockdown is the burden of unpaid care work on women that have increased manifolds. Schools and daycare closure are putting a toll on working mothers having to juggle work commitment with childcare and household chores. Living under quarantine also poses different security risks for vulnerable women and children facing domestic violence, with nowhere to escape their abuser. Hubei province in China, the epicentre of the pandemic, has seen reports of domestic violence tripled during the lockdown period. Meanwhile in the UK, there was a 700% increase in calls to domestic abuse helpline in a single day since the lockdown began.
Women’s Job Security During a Crisis
The economic effect of quarantine exerts a disproportionate impact on women. The UN reported that the high number of women employed in retail, services, tourism, and the hospitality sector are exposed to job losses caused by the lockdown. To make matters worse, it is estimated that the looming economic recession would endanger over 1.25 billion workers in retail, food services, accommodation and manufacturing - sectors where women are overrepresented.
In developing countries, 70% of women’s employment is in the informal economy, working on a temporary, part-time, or contractual basis. They are facing an even grimmer reality of job losses due to lack of protection against dismissal. Uneven distribution of household responsibilities has made informal employment an attractive option for women. The flexibility of part-time employment, for example, allows women to earn an income. At the same time, continue to perform domestic care work. But beyond flexibility, Elson characterised informal employment as one with low-wages, poor working conditions, absence of social benefits, and dismissal without notice or compensation. In times of crisis, women in this category face a higher risk of unemployment as employers consider men as the primary breadwinner, and have more rights to retain their jobs. The Asian financial crisis in 1997 showed women accounted for 80% of the retrenchment in the textile and manufacturing sectors across Asia.
Jobs creation following a crisis also disregards gender sensitivities. This is due to the fact that economic stimulus packages are usually channelled to large infrastructure projects, a sector dominated by men. A focus on physical infrastructure may risk neglecting investment in social infrastructure such as education and healthcare, where there are a large number of women workers. There are examples of insensitive economic rehabilitation measures that have led to worsening outcomes for women. In Mexico, Girron and Correa demonstrated that the fiscal measures and macroeconomic policies during the 2008 financial crisis designed to rehabilitate the economy and service the increasing external debts, also resulted in the widening of the gender pay gap.
Prihatin Rakyat: Inadequate Support for Women
In Malaysia, despite the government’s agility in softening the economic shock arising from the Movement Control Order (MCO), there continues to be a wide gap in sensitising the gender dimension in crisis policy responses. The Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO) highlighted the ‘Prihatin Rakyat’ economic stimulus package the government rolled out as one that has its limitations in reaching vulnerable women. There also seems to be a disproportionate and gender insensitive distribution of funds. The E-hailing services and taxi drivers, jobs with a majority male worker, received RM500 one-off cash transfer. Meanwhile, the same financial assistance is not granted to women who make up the domestic care sector, such as domestic helpers or cleaners. Based on the report by Women in Informal Employment: Globalising and Organising (WIEGO), the COVID19 pandemic has seen part-time domestic workers across the Americas, Europe, and Asia being laid-off without compensation. A survey on part-time domestic helpers in Malaysia indicated many workers are laid off, as the demand for domestic workers decreased drastically overnight after the MCO was implemented. Women working as live-in domestic workers, have seen their burden of work increase without any rest day(s) as they are no longer able to leave the employer’s house.
The wage subsidy package targeted for workers in the formal sector neglects self-employed women, home-based workers, and unpaid family workers. Data collection of women’s works outside the formal sector has always been challenging and complex as women undervalue the work that they do. A housewife making cakes and cookies to earn additional income may view herself as ‘helping’ the family as opposed to working. This may result in under-reporting or under-recording of women’s work in official statistics. Incomplete data put many of them ‘off the grid’ from policymakers’ line of sight and ultimately left out of the government’s stimulus program. There is a high chance that many among the 4.8 million Malaysian women outside the labour force are not idle. They are probably working outside the formal sector, but are not covered by the statistics. One particularly vulnerable group right now is domestic workers ― the childminders, housekeepers and other care providers who work in other people’s homes. Majority of these workers are women, and they already labour for low wages, mostly without benefits.
Next step forward
In ensuring that the economic impact of the pandemic will not be worse on women, it is critical for economic recovery policy and decision-making to include gender assessment. Sex-disaggregated statistics is vital to assist policymakers in designing measures that truly leaves no one behind. Policy design should also leverage the inputs from NGOs and women’s organisations to ensure the representation of voices of women across all social strata. The economic stimulus must also include sectors most severely affected by COVID-19 measures, where women are mostly represented. For the longer-term, there should be policies to provide social protection and create better working conditions for women in informal employment. Ideally, there should be a mechanism to help those in the informal employment transition into the formal economy. The unprecedented severity of COVID-19 has illuminated the critical functions of the care sector to our economy. Family care responsibility has been disproportionately heavy on women. It is the main reason why women’s labour force participation in Malaysia has been stubbornly low compared to other countries in the region. It is also the reason why women have to choose an informal form of employment. Now is the time to rebalance family responsibility and create a policy that recognises, reduces, and redistributes unpaid care work. Such a policy can be a catalyst for gender equality. COVID-19 pandemic should be a wake-up call to reorganise our world into one that is equal for both women and men, and we should not miss this opportunity.
Latifahaida Abdul Latif is a candidate of the MSc Political Economy of Development at SOAS, University of London
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