Basic income grant could make a Big difference to women
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Every year in August, gender issues are discussed in a slew of articles. It is not necessarily a bad thing to highlight perhaps the biggest challenge that intersects race, class and economic status in SA. But in 2020, Women’s Day was celebrated in the context of a revived policy proposal — the introduction of a basic income grant (Big).
For those of us overwhelmed by mismodelling of Covid numbers, exploding unemployment, incoherent policy decisions about cigarettes and alcohol, debates about borrowing money from the IMF, abhorrent stealing of Covid-19 funds and predictions about how long it will take the economy to return to the (still high) pre-Covid unemployment levels, it might be worthwhile to look at just one thing: the plight of women in the country.
The global picture for women is bleak. In the 12 months before the Covid-19 outbreak, UN Women reported that 243-million women and girls aged 15-49 were subjected to sexual and/or physical violence perpetrated by an intimate partner. These levels increased horrendously with lockdown — by 30% in France and 25% in Argentina, for example. SA was not spared this horror. Reporting on the increased femicide rate in July, the president said a woman is now murdered every three hours in this country. Many believe this is at least partly due to the enormous psychological pressures of the lockdown that include rising unemployment and poverty as well as huge food insecurity.
Globally women make up 54% of employment in accommodations and food service (the same figure applies to SA); 43% of jobs in retail and wholesale trade (54% in SA); and 46% in other services (SA 59%), including the arts, recreation and public administration. These are among the sectors worst affected by the crisis.
Women’s jobs are estimated to be 1.8 times more vulnerable to this crisis than men’s and, though women make up 39% of global employment, they account for 54% of overall job losses. In SA in February 2020, for the population aged 18-59, 64% of males were employed and 51% of females. By April, 6.5% of these males and 11% of these females had lost their employment. Of those who kept their jobs, more women than men were forced to reduce their working hours, often to zero.
As we push our resources into plans for a financial recovery, we pull them away from other areas that will disproportionately affect women. We saw ...
For those of us overwhelmed by mismodelling of Covid numbers, exploding unemployment, incoherent policy decisions about cigarettes and alcohol, debates about borrowing money from the IMF, abhorrent stealing of Covid-19 funds and predictions about how long it will take the economy to return to the (still high) pre-Covid unemployment levels, it might be worthwhile to look at just one thing: the plight of women in the country.
The global picture for women is bleak. In the 12 months before the Covid-19 outbreak, UN Women reported that 243-million women and girls aged 15-49 were subjected to sexual and/or physical violence perpetrated by an intimate partner. These levels increased horrendously with lockdown — by 30% in France and 25% in Argentina, for example. SA was not spared this horror. Reporting on the increased femicide rate in July, the president said a woman is now murdered every three hours in this country. Many believe this is at least partly due to the enormous psychological pressures of the lockdown that include rising unemployment and poverty as well as huge food insecurity.
Globally women make up 54% of employment in accommodations and food service (the same figure applies to SA); 43% of jobs in retail and wholesale trade (54% in SA); and 46% in other services (SA 59%), including the arts, recreation and public administration. These are among the sectors worst affected by the crisis.
Women’s jobs are estimated to be 1.8 times more vulnerable to this crisis than men’s and, though women make up 39% of global employment, they account for 54% of overall job losses. In SA in February 2020, for the population aged 18-59, 64% of males were employed and 51% of females. By April, 6.5% of these males and 11% of these females had lost their employment. Of those who kept their jobs, more women than men were forced to reduce their working hours, often to zero.
As we push our resources into plans for a financial recovery, we pull them away from other areas that will disproportionately affect women. We saw ...