A compilation of policy analyses by the Women’s Budget Group on the economic impact of COVID-19 on women in the UK.
Women’s Budget Group. (n.d). COVID-19.
The economic downturn precipitated by Covid-19 is different from that caused by previous shocks. It is likely to have a particularly harsh impact on hospitality, retail, and care sectors that are female-dominated and dominated by Black and minority ethnic workers. At the same time, services that enable women, and especially disabled women’s, labour market participation, including nurseries, schools, and social care, will need to operate differently to avoid exacerbating the pandemic.
The UK policy response to the 2008 financial crash was austerity. This turned a recession that began with contraction in male-dominated sectors like construction into a shredding of the social safety net. Of the cumulative social security cuts driven by austerity between 2010 and 2022, 59% will have come from women’s purses. Women bear around 61% of the total annual ‘fiscal consolidation’ burden as a result of UK tax and benefit changes, with Black and minority ethnic women hit the hardest.
Austerity is the backdrop to the Covid-19 recession. Its depletion of public services go some way to explaining the sluggish response of the UK to managing the pandemic itself, as well as the lack of capacity within care infrastructure.
The features of the Covid-19 economic crisis mean that the traditional approach to stimulus will work even less well than usual. We do not need to spend on a narrowly defined set of infrastructure projects that will create ‘jobs for the boys’. We need to invest money in creating demand for goods and services by spending on health, childcare, and social care services.
If Scotland’s traditional ways of thinking about the economy won’t work then we need to adopt some new approaches. The following principles develop Scotland’s existing commitment to inclusive growth. They are a set of ideas, challenges, and calls that are rooted in evidence. They describe features of an economy that works for women as well as men. They put care and solidarity at its heart. They will create better jobs, better decision-making, and a more adequate standard of living for us all…
ENGENDER, & Close the Gap. (2020). Gender and Economic Recovery.
This paper analyses the potential contribution of social protection to a gender-transformative economic recovery over the medium term, defined as running from the present to the end of 2022. It builds on the existing Social Protection Approaches to COVID-19 Expert (SPACE) advice publication; SPACE Social Protection in the COVID-19 Recovery: Opportunities and Challenges. Over the next two years (2021-2), economic recovery in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis will be a key focus for governments and international organisations. Although taking place under challenging circumstances, including that of the climate crisis, this moment presents an important opportunity to design economic recovery plans that take into consideration the specific impacts of the crisis on women and put in place measures to support women in re-establishing economic security. This piece is intended as a tool for evidence-based, inclusive policy responses, and to equip gender equality and social protection actors to better advocate for a gender-transformative recovery.
Alfers, L., Holmes, R., McCrum, C., & Quarterman, L. (2021). Gender and Social Protection in the COVID-19 Economic Recovery: Opportunities and Challenges. Social Protection Approaches to COVID-19 Expert Advice Service (SPACE), DAI Global UK Ltd.
The podcast series draws on findings from a research programme called Action for Empowerment and Accountability (A4EA), a multi-country research initiative hosted by the Institute of Development Studies in the UK. The podcasts in this series will explore areas of women’s collective action, changing civic spaces, and donor programmes to support empowerment and accountability.
What does social protection mean? Do we have any effective policies to help the most vulnerable? What do these policies look like in Pakistan’s fragile economic landscape further impacted by Covid-19?
Collective for Social Science Research. (2021). How does the State plan to protect its poor?
The UK government’s furlough scheme may not be doing enough to address the economic impacts of the coronavirus crisis on women, according to new analysis.
The research, by the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London, looked at experiences of furlough during the early months of the pandemic, between April and July 2020. It found:
Jones, L., & Cook, R. (2021). Does furlough work for women? Gendered experiences of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme in the UK. Global Institute for Women’s Leadership.
Materials crowd-sourced from the FinEquity community on the issue of women’s financial resiliency as it relates to COVID-19 (or other serious crises).
FinDev Gateway. (2020). Women’s financial resiliency as it relates to COVID-19.
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed how globalized, market-based economies critically depend on a foundation of nonmarket goods, services, and productive activities that interact with capitalist institutions and impact market economies. These findings, long argued by feminist economists, have profound implications for how we think about our economic futures. This paper shows how lessons from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic can inform how people think about the future of our economies and, specifically, how to address a trio of interlocking crises: care work, environmental degradation, and macroeconomic consequences. Drawing on these lessons, this paper argues for a necessary paradigm shift and discusses the implications of such a shift for social and economic policies.
Highlights
The pandemic highlights the interlocking crises of care, the environment, and macroeconomics.
COVID-19 underscores the centrality of care in our economies.
The intensifying environmental crisis illustrates the neglect of nonmarket processes in dominant policy approaches.
The biggest contradictions in our economic systems result from the interactions between capitalist institutions and the nonmarket sphere.
Heintz, J., Staab, S., & Turquet, L. (2021). Don’t Let Another Crisis Go to Waste: The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Imperative for a Paradigm shift. Feminist Economics, 1-16.
Using the United States’ fiscal response to COVID-19 in March and April 2020 as a case study, this paper explores the implications the US coronavirus legislation had for the societal distribution of responsibility for social reproduction among US households, employers, and the federal government – and the legislation’s effect on women and racialized minorities. It builds on feminist political economy research that argues that, prior to the coronavirus pandemic, economic crisis and stagnating conditions for workers in the US had increased the role of households and the US government in social reproduction relative to the contribution of employers. The paper argues that the US federal government has responded to the COVID-19 crisis through an infusion of income support, but it has failed to increase its long-term socially reproductive commitments and has not addressed the intensified socially reproductive burden placed on households or the declining role of employers in working-class social reproduction.
Highlights
The COVID-19 crisis prompted the US Congress to spend an historic US$3 trillion on relief.
Sixty-nine percent of coronavirus spending was allocated to social reproduction purposes.
Congress responded more to the collapse of aggregate demand than to the health crisis.
Federal aid improved the livelihood of some groups, while disadvantaging others.
The bills left low-wage workers, women, and minorities in vulnerable positions.
Moos, K. A. (2021). Coronavirus Fiscal Policy in the United States: Lessons from Feminist Political Economy. Feminist Economics, 1-17.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused working from home to spike abruptly, creating a unique spatial organization of paid and unpaid work that was not so different for women and men. This paper reports early results from a survey of Australian men and women, conducted during state-imposed lockdown in May 2020, on how the pandemic affected paid work, domestic work, and caring responsibilities. Findings reveal a rise in domestic work burdens for all. Women shouldered most of the extra unpaid workload, but men’s childcare time increased more in relative terms, so average gender gaps narrowed. The relative gap in housework remained. While the lockdown generated lower subjective time pressure, dissatisfaction with balance of paid and unpaid work rose markedly and from a much higher base for women. Overall, the results reflect a need for sustained policy attention to the care economy to narrow rather than widen gender disparity.
Highlights
Lockdowns created extra unpaid work, at the same time as people also worked from home.
Men pitched in more, but only to about the same amount as women were doing before the pandemic.
Employers expected their workers to be as productive as before the pandemic, ignoring care burdens.
Childcare and school closures disproportionally affected women’s paid and unpaid work.
Women’s economic security will be at growing risk unless affordable care services are available.
Craig, L., & Churchill, B. (2020). Working and Caring at Home: Gender Differences in the Effects of Covid-19 on Paid and Unpaid Labor in Australia. Feminist Economics, 1-17.
This paper uses a unique survey conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey to analyze men’s and women’s time use under lockdown. The study finds that while men’s participation in unpaid work increased, particularly for men who switched to working from home, the relative increase for women further widened the gender gap in unpaid work. The gender gap in paid work narrowed due to relatively less employment disruption for women and a relatively higher decrease in men’s paid work. The total workload of employed women reached levels that make it hard to sustain a decent work–life balance. Disparities in unpaid work among women by education and employment status decreased, reflecting how purchasing power became somewhat irrelevant under the pandemic measures. These findings unveil simultaneously the fragility of the work–life balance conditions faced by employed women and a window of opportunity created by men’s increased participation in unpaid work.
Highlights
During the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey, women’s unpaid work time almost doubled, while men’s quadrupled.
Women experienced lower employment disruption and less decrease in paid work time than men.
Employed women saw an alarming intensification in their overall workload.
Men’s unpaid work increased substantially due to working from home and lower employment hours.
COVID-19 has highlighted the need for work–life balance policies and for investment in social care.
İlkkaracan, İ., & Memiş, E. (2020). Transformations in the Gender Gaps in Paid and Unpaid Work During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Findings from Turkey. Feminist Economics, 1-22.
