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ELEVATING GENDER EQUALITY IN COVID-19 ECONOMIC RECOVERY

AN EVIDENCE SYNTHESIS AND CALL FOR POLICY ACTION

*
* 11.The Socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19
Explore the Report
* 22.Policy Recommendations
* 33.The Path Forward
* Read the Report
* Download the full analysis
* A Look at the Global Care Crisis
* Listen to the Podcast
* Watch Event

By FP Analytics, the independent research division of Foreign Policy Magazine

The socioeconomic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic has derailed progress
toward gender equality globally. Studies from around the world reveal that women
and girls are increasingly more likely to face poverty, economic insecurity,
gender-based violence, and barriers to accessing critical health services. They
are also disproportionately bearing the burden of increases in unpaid care and
domestic labor due to a global contraction of the care sector. In the past,
health crises and economic shocks have widely exacerbated gender inequities, and
these setbacks have persisted largely because of recovery plans that ignore the
differential needs that women face. As these gender-blind policies and
interventions continue to fail women, so too do they impede greater economic
recovery and growth.

A sustainable, equitable, and just recovery from COVID-19 requires purposeful
policy action to mitigate the worsening of structural inequalities and to
address their root causes. This report synthesizes existing evidence of how
women have been impacted by the pandemic, how governments have responded to
date, and what is at stake if policymakers fail to enact more inclusive recovery
measures. It also provides recommendations for rights-based policies,
interventions, and investments underpinned by rigorous gender analysis. Finally,
this report recognizes that “the women and girls who are furthest behind often
experience multiple inequalities and intersecting forms of discrimination,
including based on their sex, age, class, ability, race, ethnicity, sexual
orientation, gender identity, and migration status” and calls for an
intersectional and nuanced approach to evidence-based policymaking that benefits
everyone.

READ THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Download the Full Report

Summary of the Care Crisis

1. THE SOCIOECONOMIC IMPACTS OF COVID-19

1.1 WOMEN AND WORK

As the COVID-19 pandemic devastates economies and disrupts labor markets
globally, women have dropped out of the workforce at a greater rate than men.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) reported that at the global level,
employment loss for women in 2020 was 5 percent, compared to 3.9 percent for
men.

These declines will likely prove long-lasting due to underlying pervasive and
systemic inequities. Women face myriad, and often compounding, factors,
including restrictive gender norms that curtail their autonomy and mobility, the
burden of unpaid care work, occupational and sectoral segregation, and unequal
access to resources, such as time, financial services, educational and
skills-building opportunities, and technology.

COMPOUNDING FACTORS DRIVING SEVERE LONGER-LASTING IMPACTS ON WOMEN’S EMPLOYMENT:

1. Restrictive gender norms regarding autonomy and mobility
2. The burden of unpaid care work
3. Occupational and sectoral segregation
4. Unequal access to resources (such as time, financial services, educational
and skills-building opportunities, and technology)

To analyze the impact of the pandemic on employment, understanding the
socio-structural context is critical. Workforces and value chains operate within
a social context influenced by gender dynamics and hierarchies that define roles
and opportunities and may create barriers to resources. For example, women are
overrepresented in low-paid and low-skilled sectors and occupations, more likely
to work in the informal sector, and bear disproportionate burdens of care and
domestic work. As a result, they earn less, save less, and have less access to
social protections and health care benefits associated with formal employment
than men. Women, because of their lower status in the labor market, are
typically the first to be laid off in times of crisis. When they seek to return
to the workforce, they face heightened barriers such as lack of affordable and
quality care services for children and other family members, such as those
living with a disability and the elderly.

Box 1: Impact of COVID-19 on Jobs and Earnings

Loss of income: 55 percent of women surveyed across 40 countries cited income
loss as the greatest impact of COVID-19 on their lives, compared to 34 percent
of men.

Permanent job loss: A survey of China, Italy, Japan, South Korea, the United
Kingdom, and the United States found that women were 24 percent more likely to
permanently lose their job compared to men. Women expected their labor income to
fall by 50 percent more than men did and, to cope, tended to reduce current
consumption and focused on increasing savings.

Disruption in paid work: A survey in India, Kenya, Ghana, and South Africa found
that 35 percent of young women were unable to continue with their regular paid
work after the onset of the pandemic.

Slower recovery: A study in India found that though both men and women
experienced a large decline in employment during the April 2020, men’s
employment recovered almost fully by August 2020, while the recovery in women’s
employment was roughly seven percentage points lower than their pre-pandemic
starting points.

Women entrepreneurs also face systemic inequalities that can push them to the
margins of the economy, increase their vulnerability, and limit their growth.
Further, in times of crisis and economic downturn, businesses owned by
underrepresented groups, such as women, racialized groups and ethnic minorities,
people living with a disability, Indigenous people, immigrants, refugees, and
sexual and gender minorities, may face greater risk because of lower levels of
capitalization, fewer investors and greater reliance on self-financing, weaker
customer and supplier networks, and less social support. Historically, women-led
enterprises employ fewer workers and generate lower average profits than
businesses led by men. This holds true across several categories, including
self-employed women, microenterprises with four or fewer employees, small
enterprises with up to 19 employees, and medium-sized enterprises with up to 99
employees.

This preexisting precarity and structural inequality that both women wage
workers and entrepreneurs face is now being further compounded as women globally
are disproportionately concentrated in social sectors—including hospitality,
retail, food services, and tourism—which are among the hardest hit by the
pandemic and least likely to return at the same rate as male-dominated sectors.
This sectoral segregation—the overrepresentation of women and women-owned
businesses in a particular economic sector—was advantageous during the 2008
financial crisis because health services, educational services, and other
personal service sectors proved less susceptible to economic downturns. 4,5 In
pandemic conditions, however, what was once a protective factor now leaves women
and women-owned businesses vulnerable to economic displacement. A growing body
of research shows that women-led enterprises, including those in “feminized”
social sectors, have been more likely to report closures across all world
regions compared to those led by men, and are disproportionately affected in
sales, profits, liquidity, and growth.

COVID-19 is also exacerbating an existing gender gap in entrepreneurship in both
developing and developed countries, particularly among women-owned small- and
medium-sized enterprises (WoSMEs), and may unwind what progress women have made.
COVID-19 disrupted access to relational and network capital, which may stifle
growth for existing women-led businesses, keep new women entrepreneurs from
entering in the marketplace, and entrench the erroneous perception that WoSMEs
are less capable of surviving.

Box 2: Emerging Evidence of the Impact of COVID-19 on Women-Owned Enterprises
(WoSMEs)

Disproportionate closure rates: Among SMEs surveyed, 26 percent had closed
between January 2020 and May 2020.

Women-led businesses were 7 percentage points more likely to close compared to
those led by men, with great variation across countries. Russia reported the
largest gender gap in closure rates (26 percentage points), followed by South
Africa (24 percentage points), Malaysia (16 percentage points), and Canada (15
percentage points).

23%

As of June 2020, 23 percent of WoSMEs surveyed reported spending six or more
hours per day on care work compared to only 11 percent of men.

In India, a third of women entrepreneurs surveyed in four states closed their
business either temporarily or permanently. Half of respondents who reported
permanent closure of business also that reported they were unlikely to restart a
business again.

Supply shocks in the hospitality industry: Women-led micro-businesses
experienced larger declines in sales revenues, according to analysis of a
dataset compiled from the World Bank’s Business Pulse Survey and Enterprise
Survey programs comprising 37,000 businesses across 52 mostly low to
middle-income countries (LMICs).

Women-led businesses in the hospitality industry had a significantly higher
probability of reporting supply shocks (82.3 percent among women-led businesses
versus 74.1 percent for men-led businesses). Women-led businesses in countries
that experienced severe COVID-19-related disruption reported having less cash
available and a higher probability of falling in arrears.

1.2 THE CARE CRISIS

For a deep dive into this cross-cutting issue and policy recommendations to
address the care crisis, read more here.

Women globally experience greater economic insecurity largely because of gender
roles that consider caregiving “women’s work.” Such work, while essential to
sustaining economic production, is undervalued and most often unpaid or
underpaid. This structural division exploits and subordinates women—particularly
those who are already marginalized in society and more likely to experience
poverty—as well as limits women’s participation in the formal labor force.

The value of unpaid care and domestic work is estimated at $10.8 trillion
annually—three times the size of the world’s tech industry—and has historically
limited women’s labor force participation. Even before COVID-19 shuttered
schools worldwide, the ILO warned of an impending “care crisis” if no actions
were taken. The organization estimated in 2018 that 1.9 billion children under
age 15—including 800 million children under 6—needed care globally. COVID-19
intensified that crisis to unprecedented levels. Since March 2020, nearly 90
percent of the world’s countries have closed schools to reduce transmission of
the disease, affecting 1.5 billion school-age children.

90%

Since March 2020, nearly 90 percent of the world’s countries have closed schools
to reduce transmission of the disease, affecting 1.5 billion school-age
children.

In addition to providing unpaid child care, women also act as unpaid family
health care givers and unpaid community health workers, particularly in low- and
middle-income countries.

Women’s disproportionate role in unpaid care work is now acting as a “shock
absorber” that bridges the gaps in services, both public and private, that are
either too expensive or no longer available because of COVID-19 restrictions.
These growing burdens are driving women out of the workforce as they close their
businesses or work fewer paid hours. This crisis hits hardest for the most
marginalized women, including those working in the informal sector, those with
limited access to technology, public services, and infrastructure, single
mothers, essential workers, and racial and ethnic minority women.

The care crisis also affects adolescent girls, who may be tasked with more
domestic responsibilities, including caring for younger siblings. The Malala
Fund estimates that the pandemic could force as many as 20 million secondary
school-age girls in low- and middle-income countries out of school permanently.
This dynamic affects long-term health and labor market outcomes, as well as
those of future generations, by putting girls at greater risk for child
marriage, adolescent pregnancy, and sexual- and gender-based violence.

Box 3: Emerging Evidence of Increases in Unpaid Care Work Among Women and Girls

Greater increase in care work: UN Women’s Rapid Gender Assessment surveys
conducted in 38 countries from April to November 2020 found that the pandemic
forced both men and women to spend more time on child care. Thirty-three percent
of women increased their time spent on at least three activities related to
unpaid care work compared to 26 percent of men, who already shoulder far less of
the burden.

Even more child care tasks: An Ipsos poll conducted for UN Women in 16 high- and
middle-income countries in October 2020 found the average time spent by women on
child care tasks increased from 26 to 31 hours per week since the onset of the
pandemic compared to an increase from 20 hours to 24 hours for men.

60%
Girls caring for children: In East Africa, child care provider Kidogo estimates
that about 60 percent of families who were previously using Kidogo centers have
now shifted responsibility to adolescent girls, some as young as 8 or 9 years
old.

In Latin America, the presence of school-age children at home is associated with
an increase in job losses among women but not among men.

Shift from work to child care: In a survey of women-owned businesses in rural
India, 43 percent of respondents reported that their unpaid care work increased,
and nearly 60 percent said their time spent managing their businesses decreased.
Half of all permanently closed enterprises had no plans to start a new business
at the time of the survey.

These increases in unpaid care work are because of a severe global contraction
of the paid care sector as providers closed because of social distancing
measures and reduced demand, in part driven by parents’ inability to pay for
services amid economic hardship. If the paid care sector cannot rebound, it will
continue to drive major job and earnings losses for the women-dominated
industry—including for center-based child care workers in formal and informal
settings and domestic workers providing child care to private households—as well
as limit the ability of women with unpaid care responsibilities across all
sectors to re-enter the workforce for lack of child care.

BOX 4: SPOTLIGHT ON MIGRANT DOMESTIC WORKERS

The ILO estimates that 55 million domestic workers—nearly 75 percent
globally—have lost their jobs or had their work hours significantly reduced
because of COVID-19. Migrant domestic workers—nearly 75 percent of whom are
women, typically women of color—are often informally employed and beyond the
reach of labor laws, health entitlements, and social protections. Many have
limited mobility as a result of pandemic movement restrictions. They also face
discrimination, risk of deportation, and lack of legal rights. Workers employed
on “sponsorship visas” who lose their jobs cannot access unemployment benefits
or emergency response measures. All of these uncertainties take their toll.
Women migrant domestic workers suffer overall poorer mental health because of
exposure to occupational hazards such as isolation, insecurity, lack of control
over their time, xenophobia, and racism, and sexual- and gender-based violence,
research has found.

Women form 70 percent of workers in the health and social sectors combined—and
contribute $3 trillion annually to global health, half in the form of unpaid
care work.

$3T

The amount that women contribute annually to global health, half in the form of
unpaid care work

Women working in the health care sector often face systemic discrimination that
devalues their labor, fails to recognize their work, and limits their access to
career advancement, training, and education. They also face unsafe work
conditions. Violence against health workers, particularly on the front lines, is
a growing challenge and largely remains under-recognized and unaddressed.
Redressing the underpayment and poor employment conditions of workers who
provide paid care, including health care, must be central to recovery efforts.

1.3 CROSS-CUTTING ISSUE: WOMEN IN THE INFORMAL ECONOMY

Women wage workers employed in the informal economy, both in firms and in
households, have experienced widespread job losses or reduced hours at a rate
similar to their counterparts in the formal economy, and their wage recovery is
slower compared to men. Similarly, informal women-led enterprises have faced
dramatic earnings losses which are not recovering at the same rate as those of
men. This has resulted in many women depleting their savings, selling assets,
and taking on significant and perhaps unsurmountable debt.

Box 5: Emerging Evidence of Women’s Earnings Losses and Slower Recovery in the
Informal Economy

Both men and women garment enterprise owners and workers in Hohoi, Ghana,
experienced decreases in monthly earnings, hourly earnings, and weekly hours,
but men were rebounding more quickly than women, the UN found.

Faster recovery for men: A WIEGO analysis of COVID-19’s impact on informal
workers in 12 cities finds that women’s earnings in April 2020 were about 20
percent of their pre-COVID-19 levels, compared with men who were earning about
25 percent of their pre-COVID earnings. By mid-year, women had recovered only
about half of their initial earnings while men had recovered about 70 percent.

In India, a study found that 32 percent rural men lost paid work during the peak
of the crisis in 2020 as compared to 41 percent of rural women, and 4 percent of
rural men are yet to recover compared to 11 percent of rural women. The same
study found no difference across rural and urban women in terms of job loss and
recovery.

Pay dries up at women-led businesses: An analysis of women microentrepreneurs in
India September 2020 found that 75 percent were unable to pay their employees at
all for three months after the COVID-19 crisis shut down more than 79 percent of
women-led enterprises. Although 10 percent pivoted their business into a new
model, they faced significant challenges procuring raw materials and getting
access to markets.

Women working in the informal sector—such as street vendors, waste pickers, and
agricultural laborers and farmers—face heightened vulnerability arising from the
compounding effects of their gender and the informality of their work.

Informal employment on its face deprives workers of labor and social protections
such as paid sick and parental leave, redress for unsafe working conditions or
wage discrimination, and benefits most often linked to formal work, such as
retirement schemes and health insurance. While more men than women overall are
employed within the informal economy, the estimated 740 million women in the
informal economy globally are more likely to be employed in low-skilled,
precarious, and low-paying occupations, such as domestic workers and home-based
workers. In some countries, the informal economy is the greatest source of
employment for women. For example, 81.8 percent of women’s employment in India
is concentrated in the informal economy, according to the ILO.

Women also may experience relatively lower status to men within the gendered
hierarchies of these occupational groups. This gendered labor market segregation
is both driven by and contributes to women’s lower access to resources such as
technology, capital, markets, and transportation. Without labor and social
protections and adequate resources, and beyond the reach of legal recourse,
women informal workers are at a higher risk of sexual- and gender-based
violence, and exploitation by employers, supervisors, other workers, suppliers,
lenders, and police.

These compounding sources of marginalization—which are heightened for women who
experience intersecting forms of inequality, such as those who are ethnic
minorities, have a lower socioeconomic status, are living with a disability, are
migrants, and others—manifest in different ways across occupation groups and
sectors and are being exacerbated by COVID-19. Women informal workers face
school closures and increased burdens of care work, workplace and public
transportation shutdowns because of social distancing requirements and
lockdowns, unequal access to resources, increases in sexual- and gender-based
violence, and a greater need for personal protective equipment (PPE) to reduce
transmission of COVID-19. (See Figure 1 below)

Figure 1:
Women Informal Workers,
Structural Inequality, and COVID-19

Compounding Factors

IMPACTS OF COVID-19

EXAMPLES OF INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS

Three Case Studies from India

Click to explore intersecting effects of informal work on female workers in
India

WASTE PICKERS

STREET VENDORS

AGRICULTURAL WORKERS

1.4 GENDER-BLIND POLICY RESPONSES

Policy responses that are need-blind, ad hoc, and gender-blind—ignoring the
unique needs and constraints of people of different genders—may worsen gender
inequities while also missing opportunities for broader economic growth and
resilience-building.

The same systemic inequities that keep women from markets, capital, and
opportunity may also impede access to generalized support. The ILO reports that
women in the majority of countries it surveyed have experienced greater losses
in post-support labor income (i.e., all income linked to work, including income
support). This indicates that job retention programs that temporarily subsidize
the income of furloughed workers have been less effective in protecting women.
In total, 214 countries and territories have adopted 1,700 social protection and
labor market measures in response to COVID-19, but only 23 percent target
women’s economic security or address unpaid care.

In total, 214 countries and territories have adopted 1,700 social protection and
labor market measures in response to COVID-19...

...but only 23 percent target women’s economic security or address unpaid care.

Even policies and programs intended for women may fail if they are not designed,
implemented, and communicated in ways that actually reach them. For example,
India’s Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) program aimed to reach a 200
million women, but it missed an estimated 176 million low-income women who
qualified for the benefit but did not have PMJDY accounts.

Similarly, an Indian government-mandated loan extension program intended for
women’s self-help groups that engage in collective savings and intragroup
lending reached less than 20 percent of the households that participate in the
women’s group, and another 20 percent were unaware of the program’s existence,
according to survey data from six Indian states.

Some well-intentioned policies may have unintended harmful consequences. In
March 2020, the UK government suspended a regulation that required companies of
250 employees or more to report on their gender pay gap for the year 2019/2020
to provide a reprieve during the pandemic. Women’s rights advocates regarded the
regulation as critical to achieving pay equality, and this move to relax
accountability measures may further delay progress toward that goal.

Some policy measures do reach women but are insufficient to address the scale of
the problem. For example, while some governments have enacted laudable emergency
measures to address increases in gender-based violence, only about a third of
countries with available data have taken deliberate steps to integrate
protections for women and girls into long-term COVID-19 response and recovery
planning.

Indeed, most pandemic recovery measures fail to account for women at all. While
132 countries and territories have adopted 580 fiscal and economic recovery
measures to date, just 12 percent focus on strengthening women’s economic
security by channeling resources to female-dominated sectors.

While 132 countries and territories have adopted 580 fiscal and economic
recovery measures to date...

...just 12 percent focus on strengthening women’s economic security by
channeling resources to female-dominated sectors.

Because of the gendered nature of the economic shock to labor markets around the
world, favoring male-dominated sectors and men’s jobs in recovery
efforts—unintentional as it may be—will only further exacerbate sectoral and
occupational segregation and fail to address the needs of millions of women who
lost, and continue to lose, jobs and earnings in hard-hit feminized sectors.

Further, as national debts soar, the temptation of fiscal consolidation
threatens the welfare of women. History shows that austerity measures often lead
to cuts to social services, including those for child care, domestic violence,
and maternal, sexual, reproductive, and mental health—all of which
disproportionately affect women, particularly those of lower socioeconomic
status and in low- and middle-income countries. Despite these well-documented
and devastating impacts on gender equality and, in turn, long-term economic
stability and growth, more than 80 percent of the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) loans negotiated since March 2020 lock countries into fiscal consolidation
measures to reduce deficits after the pandemic.

More than

80%

of the IMF loans negotiated since March 2020 lock countries into fiscal
consolidation measures to reduce deficits after the pandemic.

These efforts “could result in deep cuts to public health care systems and
pension schemes, wage freezes and cuts for public sector workers such as
doctors, nurses, and teachers, and unemployment benefits, like sick pay.”

Changing this trajectory is both an urgent and long-term need. Pandemic recovery
policies designed without a gender perspective can worsen existing economic,
health, and other inequities, particularly for women and gender minorities who
face intersecting forms of marginalization based on, for example, age,
ethnicity, ability, immigration status, sexual orientation, and other factors.
Further, recovery measures will be fundamentally limited in their reach and
impact unless they also eliminate the discriminatory legal and structural
barriers that marginalize women socially and economically. For example, as we
have learned from the HIV/AIDS crisis in sub-Saharan Africa, women may be unable
to claim jointly held assets and property when a spouse dies, including land
farmed for food. If the legal scenario remains the same amid the pandemic, women
who lose a spouse to COVID-19 could lose both home and livelihood. As of the end
of April 2020—still early in the pandemic—about 114,000 women had been widowed
as a result of COVID-19.

1.5 LACK OF GENDER DATA

DEFINING GENDER DATA

While the limited data available already paints a stark picture, actual impacts
are most certainly far worse. Glaring gender data and evidence must be filled in
order to identify and rigorously examine the gendered socioeconomic and health
impacts of COVID-19, develop and implement gender-responsive policies, and
measure and monitor progress toward post-pandemic recovery and achieving the
Sustainable Development Goals. These gaps, worsened by the pandemic’s toll on
data collection mechanisms globally, are long-standing and partly because of:

* The perception of gender data as additive, rather than fundamental: Gender
data is often considered a special interest topic, despite growing
recognition from across the UN System, National Statistical Offices (NSOs),
and other global and local actors that gender should be mainstreamed at every
stage of the knowledge generation process—from planning and conceptualization
to data collection, analysis, dissemination, and use.
* Inconsistent nomenclature and accounting methods: There is a lack of
gender-intentional, standardized, and comparable measures, as well as
best-practice guidelines, for collecting gender data. Definitional,
methodological, technical, and capacity challenges plague the landscape.
* Chronic under-investment and lack of prioritization: Core gender data systems
have been underfunded by an average of $448 million a year from 2015 to 2020.

$448M

Core gender data systems have been underfunded by an average of $448 million a
year from 2015 to 2020.

Developing intersectional gender data that links gender to other indicators of
social stratification and inequality, such as ethnicity, socioeconomic status,
ability, and sexual orientation, is critical to ensure that the women and girls
most at risk are seen.

More and better gender data are needed in a number of issue areas, such as
health care access and use, and women’s participation and leadership. Others
include:

* COVID-19-related data: The most basic epidemiological data on COVID-19—cases
and deaths—are not comprehensively and consistently sex-disaggregated, and
the availability of sex-disaggregated data appears to be worsening. In the
first five weeks of 2021, only 39 percent of countries reported
sex-disaggregated COVID-19 case and mortality data. Data should be collected
on morbidity, mortality, and vaccine administration, and adverse effects by
sex and other key socio-demographic characteristics.
* The health and socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19 on gender bias,
discrimination, mistreatment experiences, beliefs, norms, and agency. This
may include indicators on sexual and reproductive health, unpaid care work,
mental health, and food insecurity.
* Sexual- and gender-based violence: Currently, less than one-fifth of
countries report measures to collect and analyze data to inform policies to
counter violence against women and girls in the context of COVID-19.
* Social protection coverage: Data on gender differences in ownership of
personal identity cards are missing for more than a third of countries, and
less than a quarter of low- and middle-income countries report data on mobile
phone ownership by women.
* Unpaid care work: Since 2010, just 65 countries have collected time-use data
in line with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicator 5.4.1 on unpaid
care and domestic work.
* The enabling environment for women entrepreneurs: This includes the use of
public transport, market access, and access to and use of digital
technologies and financial services.

BOX 7: SPOTLIGHT ON GENDER DATA IN THE INFORMAL ECONOMY

Just 41 percent of LMICs report data on informal jobs disaggregated by sex, let
alone other intersecting social indicators. Capturing data on women’s work in
the informal economy across all categories of employment is critical to
understanding the needs of all women workers in LMICs. Official statistical
systems have particularly poor data on home-based and domestic workers, and even
less data exists on contributing family workers, who represent about a third of
informally employed women. A review of research on the gendered impacts of
COVID-19 on the informal economy found no studies on contributing family
workers.

2. POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

2.1 UNIVERSAL AND GENDER-RESPONSIVE SOCIAL PROTECTIONS AND SAFETY NETS

Social protection systems and safety nets play critical roles in minimizing
exposure to risks, staving off insecurity, and facilitating recovery from
shocks. Urgent and long-term support should be allocated to groups that are not
eligible under existing government programs, disproportionately experience
financial hardship and poverty, and/or already face barriers to accessing their
rights to health, safety, independence, and education. Among these groups are
migrant women, survivors of sex trafficking, domestic workers, elderly women,
and women living with a disability. Portugal, for example, has granted all
migrants and asylum-seekers, including migrant domestic workers, temporary
access to citizenship rights during COVID-19. To ensure that no one is left
behind, governments must ensure that migrant workers, who are key contributors
to both the economies in which they work and their home countries, have access
to social protection measures and safety nets as COVID-19 devastates their
livelihoods and well-being.

In Kenya, women who received subsidized child care were more likely to get paid
work and earn more.

Well-designed emergency cash transfers effectively counter increasing poverty
and food insecurity among women, including by mitigating the effects of the care
crisis. In Argentina, for example, Ingreso Familiar de Emergencia, a new cash
transfer program, is expected to reach 3.6 million families supported by
informal, self-employed, and domestic workers affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Other forms of social assistance to improve access to care have also succeeded.
In Kenya, women who received subsidized child care were more likely to get paid
work and earn more.

Digitized cash transfers have emerged as a popular policy solution to expand
coverage of social protection measures while enhancing women’s privacy, control,
convenience, and safe access. In Uganda, for example, informal women
entrepreneurs who had microfinance loan disbursements deposited directly into
their mobile money accounts could better control how the loan was used and had
higher profits and levels of business capital.

In some contexts, though, rapidly scaling up digital payments could worsen
gender inequities, particularly in countries with wide gender gaps in access to
mobile money and bank accounts and where significant proportions of the
population lack identification cards. Requirements for legal ID to access public
benefits can be especially damaging to marginalized and underserved groups
including women, migrants, stateless people, and gender minorities. In
low-income countries, more than 44 percent of women lack an ID card compared
with 28 percent of men. This is attributable to several factors, including
discriminatory laws such as male guardianship requirements.

44%

In low-income countries, more than 44 percent of women lack an ID card compared
with 28 percent of men

To be effective, policies and programs must be designed, communicated, and
delivered in ways that account for the compounding barriers faced by women and
other vulnerable groups, including mobility constraints, low literacy or
illiteracy, and less access to mobile technology, financial services, and IDs.
In humanitarian settings, for example, best practice guidelines encourage
programs to use new delivery methods to eliminate the barriers women face, such
as provision of mobile phones, coupled with appropriate messaging and training.

Despite their importance, cash transfers and other emergency assistance measures
are largely temporary and, as they expire, will not meet the long-term needs of
women and their families as the socioeconomic impacts of the pandemic continue
to ripple through society, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. In
addition to extending these programs, investments should be made to strengthen
and reorient social protection systems to move beyond providing immediate and
largely gender-blind pandemic relief measures to supporting wide-scale reforms
for a just, inclusive, and gender-equitable long-term recovery. If these
structural changes are neglected, governments risk reverting back to the status
quo and perpetuating economic, social, and health systems that do not work for
all people.

Investments should be made to strengthen and reorient social protection systems
to move beyond providing immediate and largely gender-blind pandemic relief
measures to supporting wide-scale reforms for a just, inclusive, and
gender-equitable long-term recovery.

To ensure greater coverage of women, social protection systems, including
publicly funded care services, maternity and child benefits, health
entitlements, services for survivors of gender-based violence, and fair and
livable pensions, should be universal, gender-responsive and independent of
labor market trajectories or prior contributions to social security programs.

BOX 8: SUPPORTING WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT COLLECTIVES TO FACILITATE SOCIAL
PROTECTION

COVID-19 has highlighted the critical role women play in safeguarding their
communities through last mile service and program delivery, and by facilitating
social and economic development at the community level. Women’s empowerment
collectives have historically been a force for change and a source of resilience
in their communities, and continue to be.

In sub-Saharan Africa, households with a member in a women’s savings group, in
which members pool savings, lend their savings to one another with interest, and
share profits, are less likely to experience food insecurity and more likely to
have savings during the pandemic. Savings groups also help distribute PPE, build
hand-washing stations, create community action plans to prevent and raise
awareness about COVID-19, and help to respond to gender-based violence. They
also contribute to the dissemination of information about social distancing and
proper hygiene, and the increased risk of child marriage, child labor, schooling
disruption, and violence against children during COVID-19. A study in Nigeria
found that 42 percent of savings groups used their social funds to support other
members, 15 percent used social funds to purchase hygiene supplies, and 69
percent reported volunteering to help others or participating in groups that
protect against COVID-19.

Similarly, in India, women’s self-help groups (SHGs) offer financial social
protection to their members. Also, as of December 2020, SHGs had set up and were
managing more than 100,000 community kitchens across the country. Members also
provide doorstep delivery of dry rations and essentials, such as sanitary
napkins, for women-headed households, disabled persons, elderly, and widows.
They also support their communities by sharing information on COVID-19 through
WhatsApp, wall writings, and art forms called rangolis, or by placing a
microphone on top of a community vehicle provided by local government agencies.

Women’s collectives are not impervious to the impacts of the pandemic, though,
and require both urgent and structured long-term support to ensure their
sustainability. For example, SHGs in India faced significantly lower
mobilization of monthly savings, but those that received fund disbursements from
the government experienced lower reductions in savings compared to others. A
study of savings groups in 11 countries in sub-Saharan Africa indicated that 75
percent of groups experienced decreased savings.

In the short term, governments can target women’s collectives with cash, voucher
assistance, and food aid, as well as create a dedicated public fund, to help
member households mitigate the effects of the pandemic, protect member assets,
and recapitalize the groups, which have been vital to pandemic response and
recovery efforts. In the long term, integrating these groups into social
protection programs would have wider impacts by scaling up access to and use of
entitlements. Also, delivery of social safety nets and other services through
the groups could provide opportunities to solidify women’s leadership in their
communities and build social capital.

2.2 GENDER-RESPONSIVE JOB STIMULUS, TARGETED SUPPORT, AND LABOR POLICIES

Investing in care, not only as a public good but also a critical sector of the
economy, can drive economic recovery and long-term growth. With past crises and
shocks that have disproportionately affected men in the labor force, job
stimulus programs focused on the construction sector and/or other industries
that predominantly employ men. New research shows increasing investments in care
work in a COVID-19 recovery plan would deliver greater and more sustainable
stimulus. Increased wages for existing care workers and added employment in care
at those increased wages would generate more jobs overall, more jobs for women
displaced workers, and broadly increase women’s labor force participation as
additional care services become available. The gender employment gap would
shrink, whereas investment in the male-dominated construction sector would only
increase the gender gap. Investing in care, and generating greater economic
gains than construction-oriented stimulus, can also better reduce public
deficits and debt than austerity policies, evidence shows. Strengthening the
care economy would build long-term systemic resilience, build human capital,
safeguard children and the elderly, and support a more diverse, inclusive, and
productive workforce.

Sectoral policies and incentives should also strike a careful balance between
both directly supporting other feminized sectors that have been hit hardest by
the pandemic and generating decent employment opportunities for unemployed and
underemployed women in fast-growing sectors, such as those in science,
technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. Hiring subsidies for companies
and public employment services (PES) that have explicit gender equity
requirements, for example, could boost women’s (re)integration to productive
employment.

Simply creating job opportunities for women will not suffice, though, because a
key barrier to overcome is the gender digital divide, which excludes women as
both creators and users of technology. As such, policies and incentives should
be accompanied by programs that help close digital literacy and skills gaps and
remove barriers to entry so that women can remain competitive in the labor
market. Publicly funded technical and vocational training and job placement
programs to re-skill and up-skill displaced workers should plan purposefully for
gender equity and be tailored to ensure access and participation of individuals
from populations that are at greater risk of being left behind. Civil society
organizations and academics in Canada, for example, have championed the
implementation of the Calls to Action in the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission, and the Calls for Justice in the Missing and Murdered Indigenous
Women and Girls Inquiry Report to ensure that Indigenous people, especially
women, girls, and gender minorities, have equitable access to jobs, training,
and education opportunities, and that they gain long-term benefits from economic
development projects. These efforts could also help pave the way for increasing
women’s familiarity with digital technology for health, broadening access to
services, including those for gender-based violence, and distribution of
critical information.

CLOSING THE GENDER DIGITAL DIVIDE AND LEAVING NO ONE BEHIND:

Publicly funded technical and vocational training and job placement programs to
re-skill and up-skill displaced workers should

* Plan purposefully for gender equity, and
* Be tailored to ensure access and participation of individuals from
populations that are at greater risk of being left behind.

Governments should also support paid sick leave policies, as well as introduce
or expand paid family and parental leave so parents can take time off from paid
work to care for children during COVID-19. Additionally, a number of labor
market policies should be implemented to increase protections for wage workers
in the informal economy, such as establishing minimum wage rates for hourly,
daily, monthly, and piece-rate work; clarifying and institutionalizing relations
among employers, contractors, and workers; and increasing transparency and
monitoring in hiring and dismissal. Further, policy and legal frameworks to
eliminate gender pay gaps and gender-based discrimination, and to hold the
private sector accountable, are more important now than ever.

LABOR MARKET POLICIES TO INCREASE PROTECTIONS FOR WAGE WORKERS IN THE INFORMAL
ECONOMY:

* Establishing minimum wage rates for hourly, daily, monthly, and piece-rate
work;
* Clarifying and institutionalizing relations between employers, contractors,
and workers; and
* Increasing transparency and monitoring in hiring and dismissal.

LISTEN TO THE HERO PODCAST

AND IN KENYA, A NEW APPROACH TO FRANCHISING CHILDCARE CENTERS IS CHANGING THE
LIVES OF BOTH MOTHERS AND FEMALE ENTREPRENEURS.

“Policy makers don't make decisions based on their hearts, they make it based on
their wallets. And I think if we can start framing this as an economic issue,
that childcare will unleash this potential for women to work, we can completely
boost the economy of nations.”

—Sabrina Habib, Founder of Kidogo, largest childcare network in Kenya

LISTEN TO THE HERO PODCAST

IN UGANDA, WOMEN ARE FINDING GREATER ECONOMIC FREEDOM THROUGH POOLING THEIR
MONEY AND FINDING STRENGTH AS A COLLECTIVE — AND CHALLENGING GENDER DYNAMICS
WITHIN THEIR OWN HOMES.

“What I can advise my fellow women is start saving the little they can. I was
badly off, but now I'm doing well. My first goal is to complete the house that
we are constructing. The second goal is to keep our children in school, so we
are paying for them, the school fees. And the third goal is to increase and buy
more land so that we can add on what we have.”

—Namara Eve, Household Dialogues Participant in Uganda

LISTEN TO THE HERO PODCAST

IN UGANDA, WOMEN ARE FINDING GREATER ECONOMIC FREEDOM THROUGH POOLING THEIR
MONEY AND FINDING STRENGTH AS A COLLECTIVE — AND CHALLENGING GENDER DYNAMICS
WITHIN THEIR OWN HOMES.

“What was amazing was that over the course of these household dialogues, during
this study, they saw tangible changes in men's savings, behavior and men's
communication.”

—Julia Arnold, Senior Research Director, Center for Financial Inclusion

LISTEN TO THE HERO PODCAST

IN INDIA, A PUSH TO BRING MORE VISIBILITY TO WOMEN IN THE INFORMAL ECONOMY IS
CREATING PRESSURE TO PROVIDE BENEFITS AND SECURITY TO WOMEN.

“Ninety five percent of women are in the informal sector or they're choosing not
to work at all...Until a couple of years back, there was not even recognition
that they are workers. Now at least that the state is now pushed to recognize.”

—Monika Banerjee, Research Fellow, Institute of Social Studies Trust, New Delhi

LISTEN TO THE HERO PODCAST

IN INDIA, A PUSH TO BRING MORE VISIBILITY TO WOMEN IN THE INFORMAL ECONOMY IS
CREATING PRESSURE TO PROVIDE BENEFITS AND SECURITY TO WOMEN.

“What I like about my work is that people now identify me as a domestic worker.
[Now,] they see me as someone who is able to manage her house nicely. I like
this a lot. It's my identity.”

—Deepa (she has no last name), domestic worker and SEWA member

LISTEN TO THE HERO PODCAST

AND IN KENYA, A NEW APPROACH TO FRANCHISING CHILDCARE CENTERS IS CHANGING THE
LIVES OF BOTH MOTHERS AND FEMALE ENTREPRENEURS.

—Sabrina Habib, Founder of Kidogo, largest childcare network in Kenya

LISTEN TO THE HERO PODCAST

IN UGANDA, WOMEN ARE FINDING GREATER ECONOMIC FREEDOM THROUGH POOLING THEIR
MONEY AND FINDING STRENGTH AS A COLLECTIVE — AND CHALLENGING GENDER DYNAMICS
WITHIN THEIR OWN HOMES.

—Namara Eve, Household Dialogues Participant in Uganda

LISTEN TO THE HERO PODCAST

IN UGANDA, WOMEN ARE FINDING GREATER ECONOMIC FREEDOM THROUGH POOLING THEIR
MONEY AND FINDING STRENGTH AS A COLLECTIVE — AND CHALLENGING GENDER DYNAMICS
WITHIN THEIR OWN HOMES.

“What was amazing was that over the course of these household dialogues, during
this study, they saw tangible changes in men's savings, behavior and men's
communication.”

—Julia Arnold, Senior Research Director, Center for Financial Inclusion

LISTEN TO THE HERO PODCAST

IN INDIA, A PUSH TO BRING MORE VISIBILITY TO WOMEN IN THE INFORMAL ECONOMY IS
CREATING PRESSURE TO PROVIDE BENEFITS AND SECURITY TO WOMEN.

—Monika Banerjee, Research Fellow, Institute of Social Studies Trust, New Delhi

LISTEN TO THE HERO PODCAST

IN INDIA, A PUSH TO BRING MORE VISIBILITY TO WOMEN IN THE INFORMAL ECONOMY IS
CREATING PRESSURE TO PROVIDE BENEFITS AND SECURITY TO WOMEN.

“What I like about my work is that people now identify me as a domestic worker.
[Now,] they see me as someone who is able to manage her house nicely. I like
this a lot. It's my identity.”

—Deepa (she has no last name), domestic worker and SEWA member

LISTEN TO THE HERO PODCAST

AND IN KENYA, A NEW APPROACH TO FRANCHISING CHILDCARE CENTERS IS CHANGING THE
LIVES OF BOTH MOTHERS AND FEMALE ENTREPRENEURS.

—Sabrina Habib, Founder of Kidogo, largest childcare network in Kenya

Figure 2: Economic Recovery and the Gender-Environment Nexus

Governments should also seize this moment to take action to limit the long-term
threat of climate change, which is already affecting global prosperity and
driving millions of people, particularly women, into poverty. Implementing
stimulus programs that focus on low-carbon green jobs and training and
transitioning women into the historically male-dominated clean energy sector
would contribute to creating vibrant economies grounded in social and
environmental sustainability. Publicly funded training on the use of green
technologies that target women entrepreneurs could also ease their transition to
green economy. The care economy is also central to the gender-environment nexus.
Investments in the care sector would both unburden women of their unpaid care
responsibilities and enable them to take green jobs in the clean energy sector
while providing new sources of employment for workers transitioning out of
fossil fuel sectors.

Revitalizing women-owned businesses will require both supply and demand
interventions. On the supply side, it will be critical to close the
long-standing—and widening—gender funding gap. According to the International
Finance Corporation (IFC), 70 percent of formal women-owned enterprises in
developing economies are either excluded by financial institutions or are unable
to access financial services that meet their needs, representing a $1.7 trillion
gender funding gap. Governments must ensure that the large capital infusions
directed to SMEs as part of COVID-19 recovery plans do not end up allocated
disproportionately to men-owned businesses. Governments should channel support
to the hard-hit sectors in which women-owned businesses are concentrated, as
well as support and stimulate women’s social enterprises, particularly those in
the care economy, as they seek to develop solutions to social, cultural, and
environmental issues.

70%

of formal women-owned enterprises in developing economies are either excluded by
financial institutions or are unable to access financial services that meet
their needs, representing a $1.7 trillion gender funding gap.

Efforts should also be made to facilitate the access of women entrepreneurs to
information and communications technology (ICT) and financial services with
targeted low-interest loans, deferred payments, and tax exemptions. Some
governments are offering training programs that enable women-led businesses to
adapt, up-skill, and crossover to new sectors during the pandemic. For example,
the government of Indonesia launched and later doubled the allocated budget from
$668 billion to $1.3 trillion of Kartu Prakerja, a program that provides
subsidized vouchers for unemployed workers for up-skilling and re-skilling. It
aims to reach an estimated 5.6 million informal workers and small and
microenterprises.

On the demand side, governments can act with minimum set-asides in public
procurement spending towards businesses led by women, amending government
contracting and procurement policies to create incentives for contractors to
hire women or women-owned businesses, and encouraging private sector efforts to
source from women-owned businesses through tax breaks and other incentives.

DEMAND-SIDE GOVERNMENT INTERVENTIONS TO SUPPORT WOMEN-LED ENTERPRISES:

* Minimum set-asides in public procurement spending;
* Amending government contracting and procurement policies to create incentives
for contractors to hire women or women-owned businesses; and
* Encouraging private sector efforts to source from women-owned businesses
through tax breaks and other incentives

Government procurement from women-led collective enterprises, including
self-help groups, would enable these aggregated enterprises to revive their
businesses and, in turn, support their communities. To do so, though,
procurement processes must match their abilities and needs. Systems requiring
working capital and digital literacy to submit a bid may pose a barrier for
women-led enterprises. Other issues may also arise. In India, for example, as of
July 2020, thousands of women in SHGs produced a total of 224.65 million masks,
nearly $49,000 worth of PPE, nearly $6,600 worth of hand sanitizer, and 104,521
liters of hand wash. However, challenges related to sales and payment delays
indicate a need to strengthen and support public procurement through SHGs in
general, and to establish dedicated market linkages for engaging with health-,
nutrition-, and sanitation-related enterprises for long-term sustainability.

Importantly, no one-size-fits-all solution exists for recovery. Support for
women, particularly those in the informal sector, will only be effective if it
combines purposeful measures that meet their needs on multiple fronts. For
example, the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India, a trade union of
1.7 million informal women workers that has organized 120 women’s cooperatives
nationwide, is advocating for a livelihood restoration fund; universal social
protection, health care, and child care; provision of identity cards for all
informal workers; access to working capital, including low-interest loans; the
restoration of supply chains reliant on women’s work; and publicly funded
programs to facilitate greater digital inclusion.

SUPPORT FOR WOMEN IN THE INFORMAL ECONOMY:

A call to action from the self-employed women’s association in India

* A livelihood restoration fund;
* Universal social protection, health care, and child care;
* Provision of identity cards for all informal workers;
* Access to working capital, including low-interest loans;
* The restoration of supply chains reliant upon women’s work; and
* Publicly funded programs to facilitate greater digital inclusion.

Similarly, the International Domestic Workers Federation is urging governments
to protect domestic workers’ rights to a safe and hazard-free workplace,
including the provision of PPE; paid sick leave and access to health care; fair,
legal, and contractual wages and compensation; information about workplace
health and safety; and worker rights.

2.3 CROSS-CUTTING ISSUE: ADDRESSING THE CARE CRISIS

Care work, both paid and unpaid, sustains the well-being of our social,
economic, and health systems. The pandemic-related increases in unpaid work and
growing deficits in paid, decent, and quality care jobs are deepening gender and
other inequalities—including by driving women out of the workforce—and threaten
long-term economic recovery and growth. The ILO’s 5R Framework for Decent Care
Work (Figure 2) has emerged as a useful framework to conceptualize and advocate
for a comprehensive policy agenda to address the care crisis and accelerate
progress toward recovery from the pandemic. It calls for recognizing, reducing,
and redistributing unpaid care work; rewarding paid care work, by promoting more
and decent work for care workers; and guaranteeing care workers’ representation,
social dialogue, and collective bargaining.

To expand upon the main policy areas identified by the original 5R framework and
to highlight the knock-on effects that government action can have across the 5Rs
of the care agenda, FP Analytics has identified seven areas for government
action: social protections (including health policies), labor policies,
macroeconomic policies and government spending, migration policies, data
systems, education policies, and community mobilization and participation.
Recommendations for both short- and long-term measures and illustrative examples
are presented within these action areas, noting which of the 5Rs they may help
facilitate. This is not a comprehensive list, and the recommendations are not
universally applicable to all country contexts. Policymakers must undertake
careful context-specific care analyses and make evidence- and rights-based
decisions to ensure an equitable and sustainable care economy.

Figure 3: Adapted 5R Analytical and Policy Frameworks

Government Action Areas, Recommendations, and Examples

Click to explore recommendations, examples, and how they meet the 5Rs framework

SOCIAL PROTECTIONS AND HEALTH POLICIES

LABOR POLICIES

MACROECONOMIC POLICIES AND GOVERNMENT SPENDING

MIGRATION POLICIES

DATA SYSTEMS

EDUCATION POLICIES

COMMUNITY MOBILIZATION AND PARTICIPATION

2.4 GENDER-RESPONSIVE AND SUSTAINABLE FINANCING FOR RECOVERY

Policymakers should increase domestic resource mobilization and design
sustainable financing strategies to improve gender equity in COVID-19 recovery
efforts, whether through fiscal reforms to raise more public funding or by
increasing the prioritization of women in budgets at national and sub-national
levels.

When exploring alternative fiscal policy measures, governments must ensure that
all structural adjustments undergo rigorous intersectional gender analysis by
funding gender impact assessment to understand how policies affect different
populations, particularly in low- and middle-income households. For example, in
designing the fiscal response to the current crisis, the government of Iceland
instructed its ministries to detail how potential investments might benefit
women and men differently to assess the overall package’s impact on gender
equality objectives.

GENDER-RESPONSIVE BUDGETING IN ACTION: CANADA

$601.3M

Canada’s 2021 budget highlights the investments it will make with the aim of
“creating a more inclusive, sustainable, feminist, and resilient economy that
values women’s work.” These commitments include $601.3 million over five years
to advance towards a new National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence and
almost $30 billion over the next five years to build a nationwide early learning
and child care system.

MORE AND BETTER FUNDING FOR WOMEN’S ORGANIZATIONS IN LOW- AND MIDDLE-INCOME
COUNTRIES

€40M

In 2017, the Netherlands launched the €40 million “Leading from the South” fund,
which supports women’s organizations in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the
Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean, and is administered by regional
women’s funds that can facilitate connections to local organizations and lend
support in navigating procurement and reporting requirements.

To better prioritize women, and mobilize adequate resources to address their
needs, governments should use gender-responsive budgeting (GRB), which analyzes,
prepares, and implements budgets from a gender perspective. For example, Canada
recently published its 2021 budget, in which it highlights the investments it
will make with the aim of “creating a more inclusive, sustainable, feminist, and
resilient economy that values women’s work.” These commitments include $601.3
million over five years to advance towards a new National Action Plan to End
Gender-Based Violence and almost $30 billion over the next five years to build a
nationwide early learning and child care system.

GRB can and should also be applied to overseas development aid (ODA), which will
be essential to pandemic recovery efforts as greater overall aid flows can
provide more fiscal space in low- and middle-income countries to address women’s
vulnerabilities during pandemic recovery. Donor countries should ensure that ODA
accounts for gender considerations across all key country priorities. As with
domestic financing strategies and budgetary allocations, all funding proposals
and impact assessments should contain comprehensive intersectional gender
analyses and gender mainstreaming provisions. Governments should also increase
and streamline funding to community-based and women-led organizations operated
by those who know and are embedded in the local context. For example, in 2017,
the Netherlands launched the €40 million “Leading from the South” fund, which
supports women’s organizations in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific,
and Latin America and the Caribbean, and is administered by regional women’s
funds that can facilitate connections to local organizations and provide
technical support in navigating procurement and reporting requirements.

2.5 GENDER DATA AND KNOWLEDGE GENERATION

UN Women and other local and global stakeholders committed to accelerating
progress toward achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and that are now
focused on recovering from the pandemic, recognize that “the women and girls who
are furthest behind often experience multiple inequalities and intersecting
forms of discrimination, including those based on their sex, age, class,
ability, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, and migration
status.” To reach those at greatest risk of being left behind, all COVID-19
response and recovery policies and programs, as well as the budgets to resource
them, must be underpinned by timely, quality, comparable, and reliable
intersectional gender data on COVID-19, and in areas where women’s and girls’
lives are disproportionately affected by pandemic.

GENDER DATA: A CALL TO ACTION FOR GOVERNMENTS

* Make use of existing gender data and evidence;
* Prioritize and generate demand for new gender data and evidence;
* Support responsible and ethical innovations;
* Support the standardization and expansion of gender data collection,
reporting, use, and sharing; and
* Designate adequate resources to improve infrastructures, capacities, and
practices.

Policymakers have key roles to play in the knowledge generation process by using
existing gender data and evidence; prioritizing and generating demand for new
gender data and evidence; supporting the development and deployment of
responsible and ethical innovations, including those for the use of
nontraditional gender data to fill critical gender data gaps; supporting the
standardization and expansion of gender data collection, reporting, use, and
sharing; and creating an enabling environment by designating adequate resources
to improve gender data infrastructures, capacities, and practices.

To ensure that policymakers’ decisions are evidence-based and gender-responsive,
gender equality advocates are calling for a greater shift in the data
production-use paradigm—for “bidirectional engagement,” or consistent sharing
between data producers and users —to ensure that data reflect women’s and girls’
needs in real time, as well as to build greater public trust in data. Efforts
should also be made to shift power imbalances in the research ecosystem by, for
example, supporting more gender-equitable distribution of research funding,
decision-making, and capacity-building within and across countries, and funding
participatory action research that meaningfully engages communities, as opposed
to treating them as objects under study.

When populations are treated as passive recipients of policies, programs, and
aid and decisions are made based on assumptions, rather than demand, actions
taken by governments may be unsustainable, inefficient, inequitable, or even
have unintended consequences that further compromise the well-being of
marginalized subgroups. Policymakers should move beyond traditional
consultations with stakeholders to a stronger co-creation and shared
decision-making model that meaningfully engages women, girls, and gender
minorities as agents of change in their communities, acknowledges their
self-identified needs, harnesses their knowledge and expertise of the local
context, and provides them with the necessary resources and tools to overcome
the barriers they face in both the short and long term.

FIGURE 4: INVESTING IN GENDER DATA: SUPPORTING THE ENABLING ENVIRONMENT

Gender data suffers from chronic underfunding and lack of prioritization. In
2018, only 6 percent of all statistical projects financed by bilateral donors
noted gender equality as a primary objective, and less than 12 percent of
bilateral donor commitments were directed towards gender statistics
activities—only a fraction of which was designated for activities focused
primarily on gender data. In the wake of COVID-19, more than half of national
statistics offices in low- and lower-middle-income countries have experienced
budget cuts, and financing gender data hardly rises to the top as a priority.
The estimated cost of core gender data systems globally—which includes censuses,
civil registration, and vital statistics (CRVS), and administrative data
produced by health, education, and other systems—is expected to average slightly
over $1 billion a year from 2021–2025 and $900 million a year from 2025–2030.

Strengthening data infrastructures will be critical to building more resilient
and gender-responsive systems. As such, policymakers should support and
adequately resource a) statistical systems’ capacities to produce and use gender
data and provide financial support to modernize administrative data collection
and strengthen national survey systems, and b) gender data production and use
across the National Statistical System (NSS) to fulfill national, regional, and
international commitments to gender data. Common funding modalities include
domestic resource mobilization, loans and grants through multilateral lending
instruments, bilateral grants from donor countries and philanthropic
organizations, multidonor or pooled trust funds, and emergency funds.

Building a Core Gender Data System

Instruments and administrative sources are added to a gender data system and
produce gender indicators.

That data is used to improve the lives of women and girls.

3. THE PATH FORWARD

The differential and outsized socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19 on women and
girls are predicted to be long-lasting. Economic shocks and labor market
disruptions driving women into poverty, magnification of the care crisis, weak
social protection systems that exacerbate the vulnerability of the most
marginalized women, a lack of gender data, and gender-blind policy responses
have all contributed to worsening gender inequality globally.

These systemic failures are not intractable, though. This paper has laid out a
comprehensive policy agenda for governments to act swiftly and course-correct.
Policymakers must:

* Support universal and gender-responsive social protections and safety nets
that reduce gender-based vulnerabilities throughout life, regardless of
employment or migration status;
* Undertake job stimulus, targeted support, and multisectoral policy action to
restructure labor markets that marginalize women;
* Rebuild economic and health systems that do not rely upon the unpaid and
underpaid care work of women;
* Mobilize more and better resources to support gender equality nationally and
abroad; and
* Invest in robust gender data systems and research efforts that bring
visibility to people’s differential and specific barriers and needs based on
their gender and other intersecting sources of inequality.

Doing so will ensure that the path toward long-term resilience and post-pandemic
recovery is grounded in gender equality and safeguards the rights and well-being
of all people.

By FP Analytics, the research and advisory division of Foreign Policy.

With support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Illustrations by Nhung Lê for FP Analytics

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