Strong impact of covid-19 on women 0:44
(CNN Spanish) -
The United Nations (UN) has pointed out on several occasions that the pandemic disproportionately affects women.
Last March, he again emphasized this with an overwhelming phrase: "Covid-19 is a crisis with a woman's face."
In Latin America, which is the region most affected by the pandemic in the world, women are affected in both political and social and economic systems, the UN added.
Regarding the economic effects, Mexico is the country that most recently released figures that reflect gender disparities.
The National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi) reported on Monday that 7 out of 10 jobs that were lost between the first quarter of 2020 and the same period of 2021 belonged to women.
He explained that, in the first quarter of last year, the employed population in Mexico was 55.1 million people.
However, in the period January-March 2021 it decreased to 53 million.
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This means that 2.1 million went into unemployment in one year.
And, of this total, 1.5 million were women;
that is, 71% or seven out of 10. The remaining 604,000 were men.
What are the reasons for this gender inequality in the workplace?
We present five of them.
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Women and work at home
The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) indicated that in the region, and therefore in Mexico, the loss of employment of women in the context of the pandemic is due to the “demand for care from their families”, reason for which they have not returned to look for work.
In the
Special Report COVID-19 N⁰9: The economic autonomy of women in sustainable recovery and with equality
, published in February, ECLAC pointed out that it is an “overload of unpaid work and care”.
The pandemic "has demonstrated the importance of the care economy and the care society," said Alicia Bárcena, ECLAC's executive secretary, at a press conference.
However, she insisted that women who had to leave their jobs to care for their homes should be assisted through an "emergency basic income."
“It is society as a whole (the one that should take care of home care, not just women).
And that requires a pact.
A social and political pact because there are multiplier effects ”, added Bárcena.
Effects of the pandemic
The above about working at home is just one of the consequences of the pandemic.
The decrease in women in the labor force also occurred because COVID-19 affected in a greater way economic sectors with broad female participation.
The ECLAC detailed in the report that there are mainly four sectors with high participation of women that were greatly affected by the pandemic: tourism, manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade, and paid domestic work.
Regarding tourism, the Commission reported the following: "The fall in tourism demand affects women workers in accommodation and food services."
Manufacturing: "The disruption of global value chains and the closure of factories affects women workers in the export industry."
Wholesale and retail trade: "Lower incomes, falling demand and changes in consumption patterns affect female trade workers."
Paid domestic work: "The inability to perform remote work exposes domestic workers to the virus and to the deterioration of their employment conditions."
In addition, women lost jobs in the health care and education sectors, this due to the deficiencies of the health systems (which exposes workers to the virus and forces them to abandon their jobs) and education (the closure of schools causes a greater workload due to the little training that there is about distance learning).
Overrepresentation
The Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres, pointed out that in many countries "the first wave of collective dismissals" was serious in the service sector.
Precisely, in this sector, women "are overrepresented."
In the case of Latin America and the Caribbean, they reached 80% in 2019. Which means that more women compared to men lost their jobs.
And, therefore, their livelihood and economic independence.
"There is a giant gap between men and women in the labor and economic sectors, which has been greatly affected by the pandemic," Catalina Calderón, director of Latin America and the Caribbean at the NGO Women's Equality Center, told CNN. in the reproductive freedom of women.
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Violence against women
Violence against women and femicides increase in Mexico 5:25
Calderón said that the fact that women are losing their jobs “has everything to do with violence.
In most cases, domestic violence has a very high economic weight ”.
Calderón's explanation is that when women are economically independent, there is a brake on the control over them by their partners, which translates into violence.
But when they lose their jobs, that independence is gone.
“Violence starts with the control of economic non-dependence.
We have seen it in this pandemic, the numbers of femicide are very high, "he insisted.
Likewise, one in three women has been a victim of sexual or physical violence in the world.
And while the 35% figure is quite high, it does not include sexual harassment.
UN Women warned that as a result of the pandemic, calls to helplines increased fivefold in some countries.
All because of the increase in domestic violence.
Simply put, some women are locked in with their assailants, while being cut off from people and resources who can help them.
To this we must add that less than 40% of women victims of violence seek some kind of help, since in many cases they do not know where they can go to receive support services.
Informal work
However, 70% of women's employment in developing countries, such as Mexico, is in the informal sector.
This situation has two consequences: they do not have social benefits for their work and the pandemic affected the offer that allowed them to work.
According to the UN, covid-19 "will disproportionately affect" women because "they earn less, save less and have more vulnerable jobs" than men.
In a report published in March, ECLAC recorded that in 2020 inequality in employment rates and labor participation worsened, especially for women.
Thus, "the unjust sexual division of labor and social organization of care" threaten their autonomy and exercise of rights.
With information from María Camila Rincón Ortega, from CNN.