Women suffered the most during the pandemic

By P.K.Balachandran/Ceylon Today

Colombo, January 4: The COVID-19 pandemic has spared no section of society. But studies have revealed that women have been hit harder as compared to men. Studies have further revealed that this inequality in suffering is partly connected to women’s relatively disadvantaged position in society in terms of social obligations and norms that they are expected to accept and abide by.

Sri Lanka: State of the Economy 2021, bought out by the Colombo-based Institute of Policy Studies (IPS), says that the negative consequences of the pandemic on gender equality have been “grave”. It further says that this has already “derailed” the progress made thus far by Sri Lanka towards achieving gender equality.

One of the attention-grabbing impacts of the pandemic has been an increase in gender-based violence. The increase in this has been “exponential” says the IPS report. Needless to say, the economic impact has been more widespread and devastating. By the end of 2021, 47 million additional women were expected to be living at less than US$ 1.90 a day. This further impairs the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

The IPS report warns that if no corrective steps are taken in a timely manner, the damage could be heavy. By 2030, global GDP growth will be US$ 1 trillion lower. But if prompt actions are taken, US$ 13 trillion could be added to the global GDP. “Taking action only after the crisis has subsided rather than now, would reduce the potential opportunity by more than US$ 5 trillion,” the report warns.

Female Employment

Women work in all sectors, both formal and informal. though their presence is not on par with men in many sectors. Globally, 52% of employed women fall into the wage earning and salaried class. Out of the two billion workers in the informal sector, more than 740 million are women.

Globally, the pandemic pushed 144 million out of work in 2020, out of whom 64 million were women. In absolute terms, more men than women lost jobs but that was because there were more men in the labor force. But in relative terms, the female job loss was more as it stood at 5% while the male job loss was 3.9%.  According to some estimates compared to men, women are 24% more likely to “permanently” lose their jobs due to the pandemic.  

In Sri Lanka, between the fourth quarter of 2019 and the fourth quarter of 2020, male employment had gone up from 5,353,552 to 5,392,490 (by 38,938), but female employment had gone down from 2, 827,890 to 2,638,742 (by 189,148).

The pandemic had resulted in an increase in the economically inactive population. Women accounted for 64% of the increase in the economically inactive population in the island. At any rate, historically in Sri Lanka, women have been predominant in the economically inactive category.  In 2019, the labor force participation rate (age 15 and above) for women was 34.5% whereas the rate for men was 73%. The unemployment rate for men was 3.3% and for women it was 7.4%. Further, women earned less than men.

The type of industries or sectors in which men and women work are also responsible for the differences between them. Globally, 4.5% of women’s employment is at risk while the figure for men’s employment is 3.8%. “The reason this disproportionate effect is that women have more than the average share of employment in three of the four most- affected sectors during the pandemic,” the report said. The three badly- affected sectors are: Accommodation and food services; Retail and wholesale; Other services, which include arts, recreation and public and administration.

Education and health services sectors, where women predominate, were not so heavily impacted. Schools functioned using distant-learning techniques which enabled teachers, many of whom were women, to continue in employment.

Tele-commuting

One of the conditions which determined employment prospects during the pandemic was the ability to “telecommute” ie., go to work using tele-communications or on-line facilities instead of physically commuting to the work place).  But on-line work is possible in only some sectors like the bureaucracy and teaching, but not in the factory sector which requires a majority of the workers and at least a section of the managers to be present on-site. In agriculture, fisheries and the crafts sectors, which account 10% of female employment, telecommuting is not possible.

Assessment of Work from Home                 

It is generally thought that the Work From Home (WFH) concept is the answer to the problem of attracting women to the organized labor force. But to make WFH a useful reality, the jobs in which women engage will have to be amenable to on-line working. This is not possible in all sectors of employment, as pointed earlier. However, the scope for on-line employment should be increased wherever possible. This will greatly help women, who have socio-culturally determined obligations at home, such as cooking, washing, cleaning and looking after the children and the husband.

The IPS document points out that the perennial “work-home” conflict will be resolved to some extent by the adoption of WFH. The time and energy spent in commuting between home and office could be avoided or lessened. The family would be saving money and the employing office could save money, now being spent on maintaining an office. Husbands and mothers-in-law will complain less about the working woman not doing enough of domestic work.

Domestic Violence

However, with both the husband and the wife staying at home and interacting with each other without a break could by themselves create domestic friction, even violence. The UN Secretary-General had said that there was a ‘horrifying global surge in domestic violence’ and called for a ‘ceasefire at home’. There had been a 10-to 50% increase in domestic violence helpline calls in some countries. There was a three times increase in intimate partner violence reports in the Hubei province of China. And 92,000 child abuse cases were reported to one helpline in India.

The National Forum Against Gender-Based Violence (NFAGBV) in Sri Lanka had called for immediate attention to the challenges faced by victims of domestic violence during the pandemic lockdowns. NFAGBV had said that lockdowns had directly resulted in a “manifold increase” in domestic violence and had placed “unprecedented challenges” in the way of victims. Forced to stay at home all the time during the lockdowns, children too had shown signs of frustration and their misbehavior often irritated parents, who in turn, subjected the them to violence.

According to the Lankan Health Ministry, a survey done in the island showed that 76.8% of the respondents experienced verbal abuse, while 7.8% encountered physical and 5.6% sexual violence. The survey further revealed that 49% of the perpetrators were neighbors, followed by parents at 25%, and intimate partners at 24%.

Silver Lining 

However, there is a silver lining in the dark cloud. Pandemics and such other crises may not be entirely destructive. They could throw up opportunities and open new avenues for growth. For example the Work From Home concept might see greater application and telecommunications and on-line services could improve as many deficiencies exist in the telecommunications sector now.

In the past, some countries had discovered that adversity could result in the alleviation of women’s status. World War I (also World War II) and the Spanish flu of the 1920s, led to a boost in women’s employment outside the home in the modern, organized sector. Nearer our times, the chaos created by the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward in Mao’s China brought women out of the domestic sphere to the public sphere and resulted in more women going in for technical and higher education.     

END