COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND POST -A DIFFERENT GENDER PERSPECTIVE

Fatema Khafagy
2020 / 4 / 6

COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND POST
A DIFFERENT GENDER PERSPECTIVE
BY: Fatma Khafagy, Ph.D
Coordinator of Arab Women Network for Parity and Solidarity
Coronavirus pandemic has gendered impact. In many cases its negative impacts have increased for women. Many articles were written lately to show the gendered pandemic effects. Some disadvantaged groups of the population that include a high percentage of women suffer more than others. These include refugees, emigrants, displaced people, LGBT, and people with disability. Female heads of households, women with no jobs´-or-income´-or-with unstable jobs suffer more than others. 70% of health workers worldwide are women and this is one of the most negatively affected groups by the pandemic. The risk of doctors, nurses and others on the fore front lines is actually painful. Italy for example has seen at least 18 doctors with coronavirus die. Spain reported that more than 3,900 health care workers have become infected. The majority of medical staff in China’s hospitals are women, and during the coronavirus (covid-19) outbreak, it has been women who have been at the forefront of the battle to contain the epidemic.
The articles written on the gendered impact of Covid-19 mention that women will have to bear solely, the responsibility for childcare and for the elderly putting them at greater risk of becoming infected. They also experience domestic violence as they are locked out at home and they used to escape this violence when they were able to be outside homes before Covid-19 pandemic.
It is also said that distorting effects of an epidemic on women will last for years, as men will return to their employment again while women will lose any opportunity they ever had. They based this on what was noted in three African countries in 2014 after Ebola crisis.
While the majority have confirmed that there will be negative long-lasting effects on gender equality I want to argue differently especially for Egypt, the country I know better and in which I intend to do research that can show us the change in gender paradigm.
Now at the difficult time we experience with Coronavirus, both men and women are staying home. Some are working from home and some are not. Children are out of schools and have to study virtually using new technologies. Men know for sure that it is women who know better how to manage households and how to save and rationalize household spending to meet essential needs of the family. As a man I will certainly take this into consideration and be
convinced that I as a man alone will not be able to push my wife outside home and do this household management alone. Maybe men who are used to exercise violence against their wives will not change quickly but for sure there is a doubt that those who did not use to exercise such violence will start doing this at these difficult times. If they did are women going to tolerate it especially that they are aware now that they are essential beings to manage the household ? I doubt it. Moreover, women are in a position now to threaten their husbands that if they abuse them´-or-beat them up, they will leave home. They can leave it for a day´-or-two but men will never be able to tolerate this. They cannot manage the home and the children alone. They need women much more than they ever did before. Egypt as well as other Arab countries have not done any research that shows that incidences of violence have increased. This might be due to the few and mostly ineffective services such as helplines available to victims of violence s from which one can obtain statistics. I believe that coronavirus pandemic can reshape gender roles if women want such reshaping. Let’s think positive for a while. Women can spend more quality time with their children. They can learn new technology with their children who are virtually attending schools´-or-accessing education at home. They can ask their husbands to share with them all household chores. We hear from some men and women on TV programs´-or-on face book that they are spending more quality time with their children. They are even learning new things related to IT from their children. We hear husbands not ashamed as before saying that they do some household work. I think it is an opportunity for women to change long endured gender roles. It is time for women to think seriously of ending domestic violence. We as feminists´-or-as International organizations let us stop considering and advocating that women are victims and will stay victims. Let’s us encourage them to change the paradigm of gender injustice. If we keep saying that domestic violence has increased because women are staying home, then all hundreds of millions of US-$- spent on programs to combat VAW in the past failed as they accepted that the solution for women to esc violence is to be outside the home. Let’s be more optimistic and think of some opportunities that can help women during and post Corvid-19 pandemic. The world is turning very quickly into digitalization. Digitalization can offer a variety of opportunities for female empowerment in labour markets, entrepreneurship and financial markets. Women’s social skills represent a comparative advantage in the digital age, especially if these social skills are complemented with adequate education and digital literacy. Mobile and digital technologies can help women bypass some traditional cultural and mobility barriers, particularly in developing countries. Digital technologies could help women access new markets, work flexibly and distantly, acquire and interact with customers, receive training and mentoring, improve financial autonomy and access finance for their ventures. Women’s social skills can help them to establish networks with other women who produce similar products and can work as groups and therefore can access wider markets and can access credit without hard collateral. High-quality online training and mentoring platforms for female entrepreneurs can be particularly beneficial for women
During and most probably post Coronavirus pandemic and in an increasing digitalized world, women can also work in the enormously increasing number of call centers. Such job does not need high education for women. It can be done by women with intermediate levels of education. Such jobs need patience and many women have historically proven to be good at such jobs taken before the pandemic. Covid-19 pandemic is certainly accelerating digitalization. Now is the time to harness and use new digital opportunities and to take advantage of the digital revolution to provide opportunities for women. Digitalisation can narrow a deeply-entrenched, historical gender gap and help in ending gender discrimination. In Egypt there are 12 million women who are active in using facebook , there are over 10 million women who have smart phones and over 20 million have access to internet. The following are few of the technologies that women can use to empower themselves in the digitalization age that is accelerating at a pace we never witnessed before. Women can have e-wallet for example which replaces various payment modes. It is an application that is needed to be installed in the user’s Smartphone, an account is opened in which money is added that acts like a wallet. Such E-wallets are used to make payments for almost all kinds of goods and services like payment of utility bills, fruits, groceries, clothing, gold etc. Usage of such E-wallets has grown drastically in the past few years. E-wallet is an application in which a prepaid account is opened in the name of the user, money is transferred from one’s bank account to this prepaid account and such an account then starts to -function- just like a traditional wallet. It can be used for paying utility bills, recharging smart cards, transferring money, making payments at retail stores and at E-commerce websites etc. E-wallets is slowly and steadily becoming one of the most preferred options for making payments in developing countries. Through e-wallets women can have financial independence, can manage their financial resources, can control them and can take decisions concerning the spending of their own resources. Poor earning women have always complained of the control of their husbands of the money they earn. In addition, different applications on smart phones of women can provide them with information they need and can also protect them in different ways. For example, information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the Internet can play a big role in the battle against sexual abuse and violence against women, by providing women with tools to curb such violence and to protect themselves from sexual assault and rape. Such applications are programmed SMS messages, such as the ones to call for help as to get home safely´-or-to be rescued from home. Such messages can easily be sent to the people programmed. The user’s location can
also be sent through GPS technology, and the app has sexual assault, rape and abuse hotline numbers pre-programmed, with the user being able to add an additional one of their choice. Every action can be completed with minimal number of taps, which makes the app easier to use in an uncomfortable´-or-threatening situation. The digital revolution is offering new and innovative tools for female economic empowerment, to greater access to information, in addition to connecting women and girls with likeminded people, allows for the reinforcement of similar ideas and activism. This digital revolution is able to give women a universal voice on topics and views that was traditionally not accessible. Through the different social media platforms, women can inspire more women to speak out against social injustices, they can challenge stereotypes and can fight the backlashes they could face. We have seen many of hashtags that started effective campaigns locally, regionally and internationally such as “#Me-too” and its equivalents in several countries like in China and in Tunisia and such as “#Equal pay”. Now is the time to ask governments to close the gender digital gap through effective policies and programs. Governments should spend more resources in educating poor women and in providing them with access to internet and simple digital technologies. COVID-19 made us all rethink our daily lives from work to school to entertainment. It should provide women with opportunities to be part of the digitalized world not to be away from it




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