Women lost nearly $800 billion in income due to coronavirus pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has badly affected people all over the world and has led to the fall of economies in various countries. However, women, as per data, have suffered major financial loss in the pandemic.

Women, globally, have lost more than 64 million jobs this year and have suffered at least $800 billion in lost income last year — which is equivalent to a combined GDP of 98 countries.

As per Oxfam, the pandemic has had a harsher impact on women who have suffered a 5 per cent loss of jobs, which is more than men who have suffered a 3.9 per cent loss.

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"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,"said Gabriela Bucher, Executive Director of Oxfam International.

However, the real number is assumed to be much higher than this as this study does not include numbers of the women who worked in non-registered sectors and in South Asian countries. The report has not been able to register women who are overrepresented in low-paid and precarious sectors such as tourism, retail, and hospitality, which have been the worst-hit sectors globally.

"This conservative estimate doesn’t even include wages lost by the millions of women working in the informal economy —domestic workers, market vendors and garment workers— who have been sent home or whose hours and wages have been drastically cut. COVID-19 has dealt a striking blow to recent gains for women in the workforce," Bucher said.

Oxfam also highlighted how women had to face the brunt of the economic crisis all over the world while owners of tech giants such as Amazon thrived, even in the pandemic.

"Amazon gained $700 billion in market capitalization in 2020. The $800 billion in income lost by women worldwide also just tops the $721.5 billion that the US government spent in 2020 on the world's largest defense budget," Oxfam said in the press release.

While women were already suffering due to violence and discriminatory policies such as the wage gap, the pandemic has worsened an already existing crisis.

"For women in every country on every continent, along with losing income, unpaid care work has exploded. As care needs have spiked during the pandemic, women —the shock absorbers of our societies— have stepped in to fill the gap, an expectation so often imposed by sexist social norms,"Bucher said.