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Akanksha Khullar

For decades, governments and organisations have been steering policymaking towards achieving gender equality in all spheres of life.
In 2006, the first Global Gender Gap report benchmarked countries on their progress towards gender parity.
Fifteen years later, one would expect to see great strides in overcoming inequalities. Unfortunately, this has not been the case.
As 2022 commences, deeply ingrained gender norms continue to restrict millions of women around the globe from enjoying democratic rights and freedoms.
The coronavirus pandemic has made progress towards gender equality appear all the more bleak, slowing and even reversing efforts to expand women’s rights and opportunities.
As we approach the two-year mark of the global health crisis, women remain disproportionately affected by the socio-economic fallout of the pandemic, experiencing loss of livelihood, disruption to education and an increase in unpaid care work.
According to the International Labour Organization, the current global labour force participation rate for women is close to 49 per cent; for men it is 75 per cent. However, even employed women have had to grapple with severe challenges, often juggling work responsibilities and domestic duties while facing reduced incomes.
Reports show that, in 2021, working women in the US on average earned 82 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts. While this gap is smaller than in 2020, women in low-paying jobs faced higher rates of unemployment in 2021, potentially causing the median salary for women to rise.
The combination of low wages and high unemployment rates has placed women – particularly those in lower-income countries – at greater risk of falling into poverty.
In 2020, the pandemic pushed almost 100 million more individuals to live on less than US$1.90 a day, bringing the number of women and girls living in extreme poverty across the globe to an estimated 435 million, compared with 430 million men.


Covid-19 has not only negatively impacted women’s economic status, but their health, too. The pandemic has exposed weaknesses in health care systems as nations face the dual challenge of responding to the crisis and maintaining essential services.
This situation has been particularly worrying for women because, even before the pandemic, women’s health services were not prioritised. Restrictions imposed to curb the spread of the virus have only further limited women’s access to sexual and reproductive health information, services and goods.
In a statement released on October 20, 2021, Dr Tlaleng Mofokend, an independent UN expert on the right to health, said that “millions of women globally had limited or no access to maternal and newborn health care, some 14 million women lost access to contraception, and specialised services for victims of gender-based violence became inaccessible, when they were needed most”.
Beheaded, groped, beaten: violence against Asian women at alarming levels
Indeed, in 2021, gender-based violence intensified. While violence against women is an ongoing global crisis, Covid-19 has greatly exacerbated the problem, giving rise to a shadow pandemic where women often found themselves locked-up with their abusers.
According to a November 2021 UN report, one in two women has experienced some form of violence, or know a woman who has, since the pandemic began. Three in five women think that sexual harassment in public spaces has worsened during the pandemic.
Not all has been doom and gloom, however. There was some progress in politics last year, with a rise in women holding ministerial portfolios, from 21.3 per cent in 2020 to 21.9 per cent in 2021. Similarly, the number of women in national parliaments rose from 24.9 per cent in 2020 to 25.5 per cent in 2021.

However, even with these upturns, widespread inequalities in the political sphere persist. In 2021, there was an overall increase in the number of countries with no female representation in their governments at all.
Far from any giant leap forward in gender parity, then, 2021 has ended as disjointed and uncertain for women as when the pandemic began.
According to the World Economic Forum’s 2021 Global Gender Gap report, more than 135 years will be needed for countries to close the gender gap – an increase of more than 35 years from the 2020 report.
But the reality is that, where gender bias remains unchecked, nothing will change. More work needs to be done to ensure that women’s rights are being guaranteed.
After all, gender equality is not only a fundamental human right but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world.
Akanksha Khullar is the country coordinator for India at the Women’s Regional Network


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How the coronavirus pandemic set back the global push for gender equality in 2021

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Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) chief Ricky Chu. Photo: Jonathan Wong

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China cannot achieve gender equality while excluding women from policymaking decisions

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India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Photo: AFP

Women pledge to fight gender discrimination in Thiruvananthapuram, in the southern Indian state of Kerala. Photo: AP

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Neera Gupta.

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Opinion

Comment


Covid-19 continued to negatively impact virtually every aspect of women’s lives last year, from employment to health
Rather than shrinking, the global gender gap has widened, and it could now take more than 135 years for it to close



Covid-19 continued to negatively impact virtually every aspect of women’s lives last year, from employment to health. Rather than shrinking, the global gender gap has widened, and it could now take more than 135 years for it to close.


Women and gender

Poverty

Reproductive health

Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


Opinion | How the coronavirus pandemic set back the global push for gender equality in 2021

Covid-19 continued to negatively impact virtually every aspect of women’s lives last year, from employment to health Rather than shrinking, the global gender gap has widened, and it could now take more than 135 years for it to close

Covid-19 continued to negatively impact virtually every aspect of women’s lives last year, from employment to health

Rather than shrinking, the global gender gap has widened, and it could now take more than 135 years for it to close