Research and Analysis

Women & Unpaid Work: the impact of Covid-19 on women's caring roles

Jul 17, 2020: Women’s equality cannot be realised while women still have do so much more childcare, care for older and disabled people, and housework than men. Covid-19 has exposed the extent to which women shoulder the majority of this unpaid work, and are assumed to be available to pick up the slack during a crisis. Doing unpaid work pushes women into poverty, with women four times more likely than men to give up employment because of multiple caring roles. It also stops women studying, doing community work, and even using local services. The ongoing impact on Covid-19 will also hit women hardest, with social care services withdrawn, delays to school reopening, and reductions in services by charities. Yet despite its overwhelming importance to women’s lives, unpaid care work rarely features in legislative or policy discussions.

This report highlights the impact of Covid-19 on women's caring roles, and makes recommendation for how Scottish Government can measure, value, and reduce women's unpaid work.

Date of publication: July 2020

Gender & Economic Recovery

Jun 2, 2020: The economic downturn precipitated by Covid-19 is different from that caused by previous shocks. It is likely to have a particularly harsh impact on hospitality, retail, and care sectors that are female dominated and dominated by Black and minority ethnic workers. At the same time, services that enable women, and especially disabled women’s, labour market participation, including nurseries, schools, and social care, will need to operate differently to avoid exacerbating the pandemic.

If Scotland’s traditional ways of thinking about the economy won’t work then we need to adopt some new approaches. The following principles develop Scotland’s existing commitment to inclusive growth. They are a set of ideas, challenges, and calls that are rooted in evidence. They describe features of an economy that works for women as well as men. They put care and solidarity at its heart. They will create better jobs, better
decision-making, and a more adequate standard of living for us all.

This joint paper from Engender and Close the Gap sets out nine key principles for an economic recovery which will work for women.

Date of publication: June 2020

Gender and Inclusive Growth: making inclusive growth work for women in Scotland

Jun 3, 2020: Over recent years, Inclusive Growth is a term that has become more prominent in the policy, development and academic arenas as the uneven distribution of the benefits of growth becomes more and more apparent. Increasing economic inequality within countries has led to new approaches to macroeconomic policy that recognise the benefits of ensuring that countries not only grow the size of their economy but ensure
that inequality is addressed. Economic inequality between men and women is an example of where the benefits of economic growth have not traditionally been shared equally among groups in society.

Gender inequality has long been recognised as a drag on economic growth and closing the employment gap between men and women has
been a key goal of successive development agendas. As feminist economists have long since argued, traditional measures of growth have ignored unpaid work which often takes place within the household and is disproportionately done by women, which reinforces gender unequal access to economic resources and prosperity. As it is currently conceived, Inclusive Growth agendas are not adequately gendered and run the risk of exacerbating gender inequality in the distribution of economic growth.

This joint paper from Engender and Close the Gap has been authored by Emily Thomson, Senior Lecturer in Economics at Glasgow Caledonian University.

Date of publication: June 2020