Women bearing the brunt of pandemic
China Daily
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A woman wearing face mask looks out from a bus in Wuhan, Hubei province, Dec 7, 2020. (Photo: Agencies)

Females take on range of additional responsibilities

After working from home and taking care of her two children for several months, 34-year-old Huang Cailing is focusing on keeping her job with a home appliance company in Shenzhen, Guangdong province.

Due to the pandemic, her parents-in-law, who usually look after the children, were unable to return to Shenzhen after Spring Festival.

Huang's 7-year-old daughter had to stay home as her school was closed, and the mother was also unable to find a nanny for her 3-year-old son.

"Working from home with two children making endless demands or fighting with each other and crying has been terrible," she said.

"I am constantly exhausted and have rushed to meet work deadlines, but my husband just did everything as usual, which made me feel that it's unfair."

While people worldwide face unprecedented challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic, analysis shows that women are bearing the brunt of the economic and social fallout from the disease.

Ginette Azcona, lead author of UN Women's latest report From Insights to Action, said that for the past 22 years extreme poverty had been declining globally.

"Then came COVID-19, and with it, shrinking economies and lost livelihoods, particularly for women," she said.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, undersecretary-general of the UN and executive director of UN Women, said at the G20 summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, last month that according to the latest estimates, by next year, an additional 47 million women and girls will have been pushed into extreme poverty as a result of the pandemic. A total of 435 million women and girls will be living on less than $1.90 a day and gender gaps caused by extreme poverty will widen further.

By 2030, there could be 121 women in poverty, for every 100 poor men globally. Those worst affected would be females 25 to 34 years old, ages when many are raising families, she said.

Moreover, unpaid care by women in families and communities has long been taken for granted, she said. In some countries, women perform 11 times more unpaid care than men. This "invisible" work contributes at least $10.8 trillion a year to the global economy, and societies and economies have depended on it.

"During the pandemic, with women continuing to bridge the gap as schools, childcare and other services are shut down or scaled back, they bear the brunt of lost or reduced paid work," Mlambo-Ngcuka added.