Women have been on the frontlines of the battle against Covid-19, but the pandemic has also highlighted and in many cases exacerbated issues of gender inequality across the world.
At the annual Reykjavik women leaders global forum broadcast from Iceland this week, top female leaders, including former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and former US presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, spoke about the disruption caused by Covid-19, and how this has impacted the progression of women.
Clark and her counterparts said now was the time to highlight the importance of gender equality, and the important part female political leaders played in working towards this goal.
Iceland Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir said the global health crisis and recession had led many to suggest the issue of gender equality should take a backseat this year.
“My answer to that is it’s always the right time to talk about gender equality; not least in the times of crisis,” Jakobsdóttir said.
“In these extraordinary times, due to the pandemic, when we are witnessing a backlash in gender equality, women’s solidarity has never been more important.”
Women made up the majority of healthcare workers and carers during the pandemic, but much of the work they did on the frontlines was either underpaid or unpaid.
Globally, women make up just over 40 percent of the paid workforce, but they make up more than 70 percent of the health and social care workforce.
A 2019 WHO study of gender equity in the health workforce found women comprise seven out of 10 health and social care workers, and contribute US$3 trillion (NZ$4.3t) annually to global health. Half of that comes in the form of unpaid care work.
Women have been on the healthcare frontlines around the world, and two-thirds of the healthcare workers who volunteered to go to Wuhan during the first wave were women.
Meanwhile, women have also continued to work in schools and in the female-dominated education sector as teachers, administrators and support staff throughout the pandemic, as well as in jobs in other essential areas, such as at supermarkets.
They’ve also taken on additional (mostly unpaid) care responsibilities at home and in their families.
Despite being on the frontlines as key workers, and taking on extra risk, sometimes for low or no pay, this work has not been recognised.
In fact, female global leaders at the annual forum, including Clark, Clinton, Jakobsdóttir, UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, and other activists and business leaders, all said this Covid-19 “backlash” was stark and was exacerbating inequality around the world.
As well as doing underpaid and unpaid work, women were also facing layoffs at high rates.
As Hillary Clinton pointed out, women were often the first to lose their jobs because of Covid-19 and the last to be re-hired. They were also the ones most likely to have to leave the paid workforce to take care of children.
In New Zealand, August data from Stats NZ showed during the June quarter 11,000 fewer people were in paid employment and 10,000 of them were women.
This came as the Government focused its funding and stimulus projects in areas with male-dominated workforces, such as construction and physical infrastructure.
As well as the economic impacts to women, Covid-19 has also seen a rise in gendered violence, including family and sexual violence.
New Zealand has one of the highest rates of sexual and domestic violence in the developed world, with police responding to a family violence incident every four minutes. Family violence is estimated to cost between $4 billion and $7b a year.
While the rates of family violence rose during the lockdown, experts and advocates say they expect the ongoing recession to further exacerbate the problem.
Amanda Nguyen, a civil rights activist, rape survivor and founder of US non-governmental organisation RISE, said the world was experiencing “a moment of reckoning”.
While the pandemic was unprecedented in many ways, it was “tragically predictable” in one way: “Just as we’ve seen in the wake of so many disasters, the spread of Covid-19 has been trailed by a surge of sexual violence,” Nguyen said during the panel discussion chaired by Clark.
Peace was not the absence of visible conflict, she said.
“Survivors’ lives are invisible war zones that corrode human potential and hold back the promise of a just world.”
“What we know is that women have been disproportionately impacted in many ways by the pandemic: for their health, their safety, their livelihoods. And yet we’ve seen so many of the decision-makers around Covid-19, being predominantly men.”
The idea that the world was not progressing as fast as it should be in the areas of women’s rights and women’s leadership was backed by research commissioned for the global forum.
The Reykjavik Index for Leadership survey, carried out by Kantar Research, found conservative and biased attitudes towards women in leadership persisted.
For the past three years, the research had been measuring how people felt about women in leadership by measuring the perceived legitimacy of male and female leadership in politics and across a range of professions.
It showed attitudes towards women’s legitimacy as leaders had remained stagnant. While it was unlikely big changes would occur across three surveys, those behind the research said the fact there was no movement in attitudes was notable.
It also found young people were less progressive and held more biases than older people, with young men having the lowest score.
Those who spoke at the forum said it was important to change these attitudes and put women in positions of power in their families, communities, governments and businesses.
It was especially important at a time when countries were trying to “build back better” after the pandemic.
“What we know is that women have been disproportionately impacted in many ways by the pandemic: for their health, their safety, their livelihoods. And yet we’ve seen so many of the decision-makers around Covid-19, being predominantly men,” Clark said.
Where women did head governments, such as in Iceland, Germany and New Zealand, they had led “with distinction” through the pandemic. Jacinda Ardern’s leadership throughout Covid-19, including her swift decision to lockdown the country, had been praised around the world.
“This is a year to push forward and also leverage from this very high profile and positive role, which the women leaders around the world have been playing,” Clark said.
“We can hold a light up to the darkest corner of human experience, and allow survivors to be seen, to be heard, believed, to be empowered.”
Clinton said there had been positive moves in terms of women’s leadership, including Kamala Harris becoming Vice-President-elect.
Over the past 25 years, since the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing set out an action plan for advancing women’s rights, there had been gains in education, access to healthcare, and political representation.
But there were many countries sliding backwards, Clinton said, referring to Poland’s current attempts to ban abortion, attempts in the US to curtail women’s rights, and the global regression of women’s participation in the paid labour force.
Clinton and the others said one reason for this “backslide” was that women were still largely left out of the decision-making process.
Allowing and empowering women to take up leadership positions was no longer about changing laws, but about enforcing them, and getting rid of “the norms, the values, the deeply held biases” that acted as barriers and held women back.
“We need women in powerful positions to really speak up for all women, but particularly for marginalised women, for poor women, for women who are otherwise not given as strong a platform and as powerful a voice…
“And we need to have more women in power, who want to help empower other women and more men as allies, for the empowerment of women, and to create as clear and open a set of opportunities for women to pursue their own interests and their own dreams in the future,” she said.
While the pandemic had highlighted current failings, there was also hope.
Nguyen – a self-proclaimed “pathological optimist” – said the surge of civil action and protests around the world, such as the women’s marches in the United States, the abortion rallies in Poland, and the protests across Belarus all showed a desire for change.
“We can hold a light up to the darkest corner of human experience, and allow survivors to be seen, to be heard, believed, to be empowered,” she said.
“People are fuelled by hope; hope of a better world.”
One person who has become a symbol for hope is Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who has moved to overthrow 26 years of dictatorship.
“I always thought that I’m a weak woman.”
Tikhanovskaya joined the forum by video link, and when asked why she decided to run a campaign against dictator Alexander Lukashenko, she said she did it because she had no choice.
Like many women, she found herself in circumstances she didn’t choose, but felt an obligation to continue the fight for the people of Belarus.
“I always thought that I’m a weak woman,” she said.
“I couldn’t even imagine that I’d be able one day to take so much courage to become the leader of the whole protest movement. I never had such ambitions and never knew I had so much strength.”
Tikhanovskaya said the solidarity of people inside and outside Belarus, and knowing she had the support of other countries, helped keep her going.
The annual Women Political Leaders forum, which is based in Iceland but ran as a virtual event this year, focuses on the challenges and triumphs of women’s leadership, and current areas of focus.
It’s often referred to as the Davos for women.
Clark said 2020 was supposed to be a year of celebration, marking 25 years since the Beijing UN Conference on Women in 1995.
And while Covid-19 had made for a rather “bleak” year, in many cases, she said the pandemic had also highlighted the strength of the human spirit.
