Women Working on the Front Line

Dec 23, 2020 | Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
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The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a crisis reaching far beyond health, challenging fundamental aspects of the ways we have previously arranged our social and economic structures. It has amplified existing gender inequalities across and within our societies, exposing millions of women to increased risk of infection, violence, economic devastation and poverty, and threatening to reverse hard-won progress for gender equality. Women earn less, save less, hold less secure jobs and are more likely to work in the informal sector with fewer social protections. The decline in projected poverty rates for women has reversed and now points to an increase of 9.1 per cent due to the pandemic and its fallout. I call on the G7 leaders to explicitly recognise this and ensure that their COVID-19 response intentionally, strongly and permanently redresses these long-standing inequalities.