Women ‘systematically excluded’ from world’s Covid-19 task forces

Sidelining women from pandemic response teams leads to lopsided policies

Though many of the world's front-line healthcare workers are women, there is a lack of women on Covid-19 task forces around the world.  AFP

Women have been “systematically excluded” from Covid-19 government task forces globally and make up less than a quarter of those running pandemic response teams, the UN said in a report on Monday.

Data from two UN agencies and the University of Pittsburgh showed that women constitute only 24 per cent of experts working on 225 coronavirus task forces across 137 countries, the UN said in a statement.

Only eight countries have Covid-19 task forces with equal numbers of male and female experts. In 26 of the task forces assessed, there were “shockingly no women at all”, said the report.

“Women have been on the front lines of the Covid-19 response, making up 70 per cent of healthcare workers globally,” said Achim Steiner, head of the UN Development Programme.

“However, they have been systematically excluded from the decision-making processes on how to address the impacts of the pandemic.”

The lack of women on Covid-19 task forces means government policies have not been delivering for women, researchers said.

Of the 2,280 coronavirus response policies assessed, only 13 per cent offered economic, social or labour market solutions tailored to women’s needs, the report said.

“It is inconceivable that we can address the most discriminatory crisis we have ever experienced without full engagement of women,” said UN Women executive director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka.

“Men have given themselves the impossible task of making the right decisions about women without the benefit of women’s insights.”

The coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed more than 2.7 million lives and infected 123 million, is significantly more deadly for men than it is for women.

Still, women have suffered greatly from the virus and also faced additional burdens, including job loss, the need to care for children and family members, and higher rates of domestic abuse as families are locked in their homes.

In some countries, calls to domestic abuse hotlines have increased five-fold.

Wonder Woman actress Gal Gadot and US Vice President Kamala Harris spoke out against domestic violence this month during the 65th Commission on the Status of Women, an annual UN meeting on women's empowerment that is being held online this year.

Addressing those talks last week, Shamsa Saleh, Secretary General of the UAE’s Gender Balance Council, said the pandemic had “shed fresh light on gender inequalities” faced by women globally.

“Around the world last year, women spent three times more than men on unpaid caregiving, and are now more challenged by the well-known realities of work-life balance,” said Ms Saleh.