We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 April 2023
Introduction
COVID-19 could reverse the limited progress that has been made on gender equality and women's rights. Women's leadership and contributions must be at the heart of resilience and recovery efforts. Nearly 60 per cent of women around the world work in the informal economy, earning less, saving less, and at greater risk of falling into poverty. As markets fall and businesses close, millions of women's jobs have disappeared. At the same time as they are losing paid employment, women's unpaid care work has increased exponentially as a result of school closures and the increased needs of older people. These currents are combining as never before to defeat women's rights and deny women's opportunities. I urge governments to put women and girls at the centre of their efforts to recover from COVID-19. That starts with women as leaders, with equal representation and decision-making power. (Guterres, 2020)
Besides the enormous effect on both individual and public health, the COVID-19 pandemic itself and the measures employed to control it have also had huge socio-economic consequences with strongly gendered effects. Therefore, identifying gender aspects in the pandemic response is crucial, especially as the COVID-19 pandemic has shown the potential to reinforce traditional gendered patterns. To a higher degree than men, women are forced to combine paid work and unpaid family care at home. They are also suffering more from domestic violence and are forming the majority of the essential but low paid workforce, owing to the gender-segregated labour market.
This chapter explores differences in specific aspects of gender equality before and after the pandemic in two countries. Gender equality is defined in this chapter as the equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities of women and men and girls and boys. Equality does not entail that women and men will become the same but that women's and men's rights, responsibilities and opportunities will not depend on whether they are born male or female. Gender equality implies that the interests, needs and priorities of both women and men are taken into consideration, recognising the diversity of different groups of women and men. Equality between women and men is seen as both a human rights issue and as a precondition for, and indicator of, sustainable people-centred development (European Institute for Gender Equality, 2020).
We compare the management of the COVID-19 crisis in Germany and Sweden and the different gender-related policies to deal with the crisis.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
