The crisis accentuates inequalities between men and women
Audio 04:12
A street in Paris.
The economic crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has increased inequalities between men and women.
© REUTERS
By: Pauline Gleize Follow
9 mins
The economic crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has increased inequalities, including those between men and women.
The Davos Economic Forum's annual report on gender inequalities confirms this
.
Publicity
On average in the world, and this hides great disparities, the gap between men and women has been closed to 68% (knowing that 100% represents parity).
This average is down 0.6 percentage point compared to the previous study.
This may sound like a slight setback, but it brings the number of years to reach global parity to over 135.
Thirty-six years older than announced last year, a calculation based on the trajectory of improvements in recent years.
And for now, the 2021 report does not fully reflect the impact of the crisis.
The indicator has, in fact, deteriorated rather at the political level.
But the rapporteurs believe that when the effect of the pandemic is fully taken into account, the indicator on the economy could be revised downwards.
The International Labor Organization has indeed highlighted that 5% of women workers lost their jobs in 2020 against 3.9% for men.
Women are more represented in the sectors most affected by the crisis.
Beyond access to employment, it is access to supervision that seems more complicated.
The World Economic Forum worked in partnership with LinkedIn.
The professional social network has noticed a decline in the hiring of women in management positions, a return of one or two years in several sectors.
The authors of the report are also concerned about the potentially lasting effects of this crisis on gender inequalities.
The crisis has further accelerated digitization.
So, the World Economic Forum studied eight sectors embodying the “
jobs of tomorrow
”.
But of the eight, only two have reached parity.
In most, women are under-represented.
They only constitute 14% of the workforce in the Cloud, 32% in data and artificial intelligence.
The “
jobs of tomorrow
” are still very masculine.
The report therefore calls for stimulus policies favorable to women
Some initiatives in this direction have already emerged.
As early as April 2020, a commission from the State of Hawaii outlined a “
feminist plan for recovery
”.
At the federal level, in the American infrastructure plan announced yesterday, the White House was careful to stress its desire to reduce inequalities, including between men and women.
Joe Biden, for example, asks Congress to devote 25 billion dollars to the development of child welfare services, their deficiency having an impact on employment, particularly that of women.
The European Union, for its part, listed gender equality among the criteria to which it would be attentive in the use of funds from the recovery plan.
However, the part devoted to this objective has not been quantified, unlike that intended for climate issues.
Voices have been raised, worrying that two of the major goals, climate and digitalization, are more masculine sectors.
This is what denounced among others, the feminist collective "
half of it
".
A movement that hit the mark for example in Italy, Italy which is at the back of the pack in the Western Europe region of the Davos Forum ranking and 63rd in the world.
Rome, the first beneficiary of European aid, has nevertheless made women one of the three priorities of the “
social inclusion
” section, which receives
10% of the funds.
The plan presented by the government provides, among other things, for an envelope for the reception of young children and tax assistance for the hiring of women.
The program is not yet finalized.
So yesterday, members of the il Giusto mezzo (the golden mean) movement wrote to Mario Draghi asking for 50% of the recovery plan to go to female employment.
Newsletter
Receive all international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
Economy
Social issues
Womens rights