With lockdowns and homes suddenly becoming workplaces during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, the pressure on working women everywhere has increased exponentially, having a regressive effect on gender equality. The coronavirus crisis has not only prompted women to lose their jobs faster than average, according to the McKinsey Institute; it also highlighted like never before the inequalities related to women’s ‘double burden’ — that is, balancing both their jobs and unpaid care work and housework, which remain disproportionately carried by them. In this context, Beth Goldblatt, an associate professor at Sydney’s University of Technology’s faculty of Law specializing in human rights, believes governments should provide a safety net on which women can rely to narrow the gender gap worsened by the health crisis but warns that financial aid alone won’t cut it.
Covid-19 has hit women particularly hard. What could be done by governments to mitigate gender inequalities in the middle of a spike in coronavirus cases, such as the one going on right now in Brazil??
Beth Goldblatt: The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the importance of providing affordable, high-quality childcare if we expect women to be able to go to work. But it’s not only about taking the burden off of women. It’s about society recognizing that childcare is a social issue for both men and women of working age. And that is as much a state responsibility as it is an individual one.
During a health crisis such as the one we’re going through, social protection becomes absolutely key. That is why many countries around the world have introduced emergency social protection measures, like Brazil, providing financial aid and recognizing the need for some kind of safety net when people lose income and livelihoods. The pandemic has highlighted that need.
Because we know that unemployment is not something that people choose; it’s a structural feature of our economy and our society, so we need state resources to provide for people. For me, this is not just a policy choice, it is a human right.
How did that social protection system work in Australia during the pandemic?
There is a social safety net in Australia, but the unemployment benefits are way lower than other forms of social security aid, such as retirement or disability pensions. During the pandemic, the government saw that there was a sudden spike in unemployment and increased these benefits so that people could get a livable amount of income. It was enough to survive, people were happy with that, and evidence supports that it helped bolster the economy because it allowed the poorest to spend money in their communities.
But now, these aids are going back to a much lower level of income support. And again, many people will be living below the poverty threshold.
In 2017, an Australian NGO for single mothers, the National Council of Single Mothers and their Children, complained to the UN, arguing that cuts in sole parenting benefits in Australia were human rights violations. Can those cuts be considered gender-based discrimination?
The group raised a complaint to the UN’s Cedaw Committee (Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women), arguing that Australia had violated their rights by reducing the amount of income support provided for single parents. Research shows that children in single parent households are the poorest in Australia, and most single parents are women, therefore it is a form of gender-based discrimination. It’s also a human rights issue.
Human rights instruments say that you can’t go backward on people’s rights unless there are very convincing arguments about why it is impossible to uphold them. And governments have not convincingly shown that it was necessary to cut those benefits.
You wrote an article about universal basic income, gender, and Covid-19, in which you say that feminists are divided on its importance for gender equality. Why is that?
The whole idea of a basic income is that it’s universal, and the same amount of money goes unconditionally to every member of society — men and women alike.
So, while there are some feminists who think it’s a very good idea to introduce — because it would take away all those burdens that women face in trying to access social security — others say that it wouldn’t change the fact that women still do most of the care work.