The United Nations (UN), defined this year’s motto for the international women’s day to “Invest in women: Accelerate progress”. The argument underneath this slogan is, that investing in gender equality and increasing support for women is crucial to create prosperous economies and a healthy planet.
Among the five key areas the UN wants to address are also disparities that arose from the COVID-19 pandemic. The key points are:
- Human rights: Gender equality is the greatest human rights challenge, benefiting everyone if resolved.
- Ending poverty: Since 2020, 75 million more people have fallen into poverty due to conflicts and the pandemic. Women are disproportionally affected by this, and 342 million women and girls are expected to live in poverty by 2030 if no actions are taken.
- Gender-responsive financing: rising prices and conflicts lead 75% of countries to cut public spending by 2025 which negatively impacts women. E.g., during the COVID-19 pandemic women have been losing their job at twice the rate as men in many countries. As a result, women rely more on social security support.
- Green economy and care society: A shift to a green economy and care society is proposed to amplify women’s voices.
- Supporting feminist change-makers: Feminist organizations only receive 0.13% of official development assistance worldwide.
While it is clear, that the COVID-19 pandemic affected us all, its impact on people’s life is not the same for all genders. Economically, women were generally hit harder by the pandemic.
Women are more likely to work in jobs that require close contact such as hospitality, travel, personal care, cleaning, etc. and therefore had to stop working during the pandemic more often than men.
In addition, due to traditional value norms, women are more likely to take on unpaid work, especially regarding childcare. With schools and care institutions being closed many women had to either try juggle their job and family duties at the same time or had to leave their job to take over childcare.
A study on the impact of COVID-19 on close to 40,000 businesses from 49 countries, revealed that women-led businesses were disproportionally hit by the pandemic compared to men-led businesses. Adding to this disparity, women-led businesses were less likely to receive some form of public support despite being hit harder.
Women were at higher risk to get infected
Since women are more likely to work in the healthcare sector, women were at higher risk of getting infected at work. This not only poses a health threat but can also have secondary financial implications if the infection impairs their ability to work, as it is true for many people suffering from long-term symptoms after a SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Even though men show a higher mortality during the acute phase of COVID-19, women are approximately 1.5 times more likely to develop Long COVID than men, as explained in more detail in this blog.
The reason for these differences in short and long-term outcomes after a SARS-CoV-2 infection lie in the nature of our immune systems. While women’s immune system may react more strongly to an acute infection, and thereby can save their lives in that phase, it may also stay active longer than it should, leading to an autoimmune reaction.
Gender inequalities are amplified by health-related differences.
The fact that more women than men suffer from Long COVID adds to the existing economic disparities resulting from the pandemic. People affected by Long COVID experience many additional financial challenges due to their impaired ability to work, challenges in finding government support and high healthcare costs, resulting from a lack of therapeutic options.
Women who lost their job during the pandemic or due to their long-term symptoms as well as women primarily focusing on unpaid work such as childcare might suddenly find themselves left alone by existing social support systems.
It is of utmost importance to fight gender inequality and work on support systems that are taking existing inequalities into account. Today, on international women’s day we want to raise awareness for women suffering from Long COVID and are calling on society and politics to #InvestInWomen.
