Women’s day: Time to address inequalities experienced by women during pandemic

by Amalie Holmgaard Mersh

Ahead of Women’s Day, the European Parliament started discussing the disproportionate effects that the pandemic had on women, who ultimately faced more unpaid care work, violence and worsened mental health as a consequence of lockdowns and curfews.

As the pandemic swept over the world and forced countries into lockdowns, the side effects of urging everyone to stay home started to show.

“During the last two years, we have seen evidence that the disproportionate effects of the pandemic on women in care work, both paid and unpaid, is at the heart of our society,” said the president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, during a special interparliamentary committee meeting held last week (3 March).

“The pandemic has also highlighted the disproportionate effects of teleworking on women. (…) it came with a cost because women are still largely expected to have the primary responsibility of family and household duties and found it even more difficult than before to reconcile work and family life,” Metsola added.

A Parliament policy brief outlined how 81% of women and 48% of men provide care daily. Overall, 94% of women were involved in unpaid care several times a week, compared to 70% men, with numbers varying from country to country.

The brief references another Parliament study from 2021, which showed that the pandemic had a greater impact on economic sectors with most female workers. It unequally increased the amount of unpaid care work for women and increased violence against women, including domestic violence.

“On average, women across the EU have been doing 36 hours of unpaid work care work each week during the pandemic, which is almost 2000 hours per year. (…) So this means that women have quite literally been working a double shift since the COVID crisis began,” said Carlien Scheele, director of the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE).

She stressed that changes need to be made in the homes, that there is a need for affordable professional care services and that the future of telework has to be managed carefully.

A Eurobarometer survey released on Friday (4 March) also showed that 77% of women across the EU think that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to increased physical and emotional violence against women in their country. Thirty-eight per cent of women agreed that the pandemic harmed their income.

Furthermore, 1% totally or somewhat agreed with having considered or decided permanently to reduce the amount of time allocated to paid work due to the pandemic.

The impact of the pandemic on mental health was also included, with 41% of women finding that lockdown and curfew measures had a significant negative impact on their mental health, with numbers varying across socio-demographic groups and countries.

A brief from the WHO released Tuesday (2 March) also said their findings indicated “that women have been more severely impacted than men” regarding mental health during the pandemic.

New legal act coming up

“COVID ultimately exposed the real nature and the true extent of the inequalities that women still and must still endure. And it’s our responsibility (…) to address it,” said Metsola.

Likewise, the Vice President of the European Commission Vera Jourova said that there is “an opportunity to make sure that the recovery efforts are inclusive and that we build back better, including the impact of women.”

She added that the Commission will propose initiatives to promote gender equality, including a “comprehensive legal act aiming to combat the violence against women and domestic violence.”

According to the Commissioner, this act will criminalise the forms of violence against women for which we have the legal basis in the treaty and increase prevention and protection for victims.

In terms of women in the labour market, Jourova said the Commission continues to “empower women’s access to and participation at the labour market” and has set a target to have 75% of women on the labour market by 2030.

The same 75% goal was included in a previous strategy called Europa 2020 presented by the Barroso Commission in 2010 but was envisaged to be reached by 2020.

“Now we are postponing it, and it shows that we are doing something wrong. We do not take strong enough measures,” Jourova said.

French Minister for Gender Equality Elisabeth Moreno highlighted that the French Presidency has announced it will propose two initiatives, one to address gender pay gaps and better access to the labour market, and another on quotas for women in boards of big companies.

“We want a society that protects all its citizens, men and women, and where all the fundamental rights are respected, which means we must put in place the lessons of the pandemic, one of which is that there is a persistent inequality,” said Moreno.

*first published in: www.euractiv.com