Covid-19 pandemic has hit women badly as a new report reveals millions of women worldwide lost a minimum of $800 billion in income in year 2020.
A new report from Oxfam International reveals that the colossal income losses of women around the globe is much higher than the cummulative Gross Domestic Products of 98 countries, the $700 billion market capitalization Amazon recorded in 2020r and the approximated $721.5 billion that the US government incurred in it’s 2020 defense budget.
Gabriela Bucher, Executive Director of Oxfam International said: “Economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic is having a harsher impact on women, who are disproportionately represented in sectors offering low wages, few benefits and the least secure jobs.
“Instead of righting that wrong, governments treated women’s jobs as dispensable — and that has come at a cost of at least $800 billion in lost wages for those in formal employment.”
Oxfam cites the cumulative income loss as a “conservative estimate” that does not account for “wages lost by the millions of women working in the informal economy” — that they describe as domestic workers, market vendors and garment workers.
Bucher said: “Covid-19 has dealt a striking blow to recent gains for women in the workforce.”
According to Oxfam, women account for over 64 million jobs lost in 2020. That accounts for 5% of total jobs held by women, compared to a 3.9% loss for men.
Mara Bolis, Associate Director of Women’s Economic Empowerment at Oxfam America said: “We were facing a crisis of inequality before 2020 and that’s now exploded. That’s as a result of a lack of attention to gender sensitive policy making and leaving women on their own to cope with this crisis and to absorb the systemic failures that have led us to this point.”
According to the United Nations, women were earning 77 cents per every dollar that men make before the pandemic began. And the coronavirus crisis has worsen the gender pay gap.
