Topic - Corona crisis, opportunity and punishment.
1 minutes speech.
Answers
Answer:
The COVID‑19 pandemic is creating a profound shock worldwide, with different implications for men and women. Women are serving on the frontlines against COVID‑19, and the impact of the crisis on women is stark. Women face compounding burdens: they are over-represented working in health systems, continue to do the majority of unpaid care work in households, face high risks of economic insecurity (both today and tomorrow), and face increased risks of violence, exploitation, abuse or harassment during times of crisis and quarantine. The pandemic has had and will continue to have a major impact on the health and well-being of many vulnerable groups (OECD, 2020[1]). Women are among those most heavily affected.
From a medical perspective, early evidence suggests that COVID‑19 seems to hit men harder than women. Fatality rates for men who have contracted COVID‑19 are 60-80% higher than for women. However, as COVID‑19 spreads around the world, the impact of the pandemic on women is becoming increasingly severe.
Women are at the forefront of the battle against the pandemic as they make up almost 70% of the health care workforce, exposing them to greater risk of infection, while they are under-represented in leadership and decision making processes in the health care sector. Moreover, due to persistent gender inequalities across many dimensions, women’s jobs, businesses, incomes and wider living standards may be more exposed than men’s to the anticipated widespread economic fallout from the crisis. Among seniors, globally, there are more elderly women living alone on low incomes – putting them at higher risk of economic insecurity.
Around the world, women carry out far more care work than men – up to ten times as much according to the OECD Development Centre’s Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI). The travel restrictions, at-home quarantines, school and day-care centre closures, and the increased risks faced by elderly relatives can be expected to impose additional burdens on women, even when both women and their partners are confined and may be expected to continue working from home. Crucially, lockdown situations exacerbate risks of violence, exploitation, abuse or harassment against women, as has been seen from previous crises and from the early case of China during the COVID crisis. And despite all this, women’s voices are still not well represented in the media. This risks leaving their expertise unheard and their perspectives ignored in the policy response to the crisis.