INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY 2022: THE AFTERMATH OF THE PANDEMIC
While the fight for gender equality around the world has been delivering positive results over the last decades, with global trends pointing to the reduction of gender inequality on many fronts, the Covid pandemic has brought significant disruption to this progress. Alongside the health and economic crises we have experienced, we are seeing a sudden peak in certain parameters of gender inequality which we hope that, with the vigilance of society and the implementation of public policies designed to target these changes, will soon be reversed.
This is particularly true in the field of violence against women.
The UN report “Measuring the shadow pandemic: Violence against women during COVID-19” states that, since the start of the pandemic:
One in two women report that they or a woman they know have experienced violence.
Seven in ten women think domestic violence has increased.
3 in 5 women think that sexual harassment in public spaces has worsened.
Only one in ten would seek help from the police if they experienced this kind of violence.
The gender pay gap has also suffered as a consequence of the economic impacts of the pandemic.
According to data from the UK Office of National Statistics, the gender pay gap for all UK employees increased in the year up to April 2021, with the rise partially attributed to the disproportionately high number of women who were furloughed.
The ONS found that the gender pay gap – measured as the difference in average hourly earnings, excluding overtime, between men and women:
Increased in April 2021 to 15.4 per cent, up from 14.9 per cent in 2020.
This increase was more pronounced among full-time UK employees, where the pay gap increased to 7.9 per cent, up from 7 per cent in 2020.
The figures also showed that the pay gap was highest for the top 10 per cent of earners, with women in this group earning 16.1 per cent less than their male counterparts. In comparison, the gap was just 3.1 per cent among the bottom 10 per cent.
In Gibraltar, due to a severe dearth of statistics on parameters of social progress it is difficult to analyse the progress of the fight against gender inequality, however, the last data from the Employment survey shows that in 2020, before the start of the pandemic, the gap between earnings of adults in (monthly paid) full-time employment was of 12,4% (£3,495.80 to £2,813.00), close to 5% bigger than in that of the UK. In part-time work however, we find that this gap is almost non-existent, probably due to the specifics of our economy in which most part-time employment exists in low-grade professions that are mostly on minimum wage. The inequality therefore can be seen particularly clearly in the number of men and women in full-time employment, in which men almost double the number of women, in contrast with the numbers in part-time employment, in which the number of women is approximately double that of men.
These statistics point to the fact that women continue to carry the lion’s share of the burden of the housework and the family care duties, pushing aside their careers and accepting a secondary role in professional life.
Gibraltar continues to have extremely poor regulations in the field of gender equality, with paternal/maternal leave provisions falling way behind other European countries. This is particularly true of Gibraltar’s private sector, in which statutory maternity and paternity leave provisions are close to non-existent.
Together Gibraltar will continue to fly the flag of Gender equality and fight for better protections for our women and encourages all in society to continue to engage and raise awareness in this field, despite the backlash from reactionary voices.
LINKS:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/.../bulle.../genderpaygapintheuk/2021