A Tale of Two Pandemics? COVID-19 and Gendered Policy Responses in the EU

Abstract

Pre-existing imbalances between women and men in European societies do not bode well for gender balance throughout the pandemic and its unequal pressure. The unprecedented tragedy of the COVID-19 outbreak highlights and exacerbates long-established challenges for the path towards gender equal societies. In this context, this analysis asks what women’s place in the pandemic response is, highlighting cross-country differences in France, Germany, Italy and Spain on the basis of the UNDP COVID-19 Global Gender Response Tracker. The assessment identifies the key drivers deteriorating women’s welfare across the labor market, family balances and gender-based violence, comparing how variations in risk factors (e.g. length and intensity of the pandemic and derived restrictions) match to policy responses catering for the needs of women. Findings reveal that the worst hit countries are not unambiguously those with the starkest policy effort to mitigate any negative outlook for women. The place for women in the crisis-management and recovery remains fairly limited, especially in those countries already lagging behind in ensuring equal economic opportunities. The evidence suggests that in the absence of a strong prioritization of gender parity, the turbulent road ahead may be even more tumultuous for women, resulting in a concrete risk of a heavy COVID-19 legacy reversing the patchy progress of the latest years. While the situation is still unfolding, it is crucial to closely monitor the gendered initiatives while at the same time promoting a deeper policy effort towards equality.The analysis investigates gender parity in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic through a comparative assessment of outbreak and restriction severities – with well-established risks concerning parity – together with (gendered) responses in selected Member States. The four countries, namely France, Germany, Italy and Spain include some of the worst-hit societies within the EU while allowing for the homogeneous comparison across the big Member States across the core and periphery of the Union. Pinpointing the gendered impact of crises as emerged in the literature on the Great Recession and early evidence from the pandemic, the analysis identifies the areas in which policy measures are most needed to counteract the negative impact of the health crisis and its broad implications for work, life and societies. The starting point of the analysis is the benchmark of the pre-pandemic status of the countries of interest in terms of progress toward equality, as evidence by international cross-country tracking of gender parity (WEF 2019) to derive a view of the situation of women and policy preferences and actions in this regard across the four countries. The overview is enriched with a cross-country comparison of the scale of the outbreak in the four Member States with special attention to (i) discrepancies in dynamics which may increase the negative outlook for women in some of the countries in the sample and (ii) early findings on the economic and policy responses and the preliminary picture they draw on potential divergences in accounting for and catering to women’s needs. From such premises, the paper assesses discrepancies in gendered policymaking concerning the pandemic crisis management, considering cross-country trends and the contribution of factors such as the pre-existing family and social structure – with its implications for parity – and the scale of the COVID-19 tragedy. Based on the data from the UNDP (2020) Gender COVID tracker, the research further assesses the alignment between factors heightening the burden on women – such as length of restrictions and in particular school closures and stay-at-home orders – and the gender-sensitive policies. A further element of consideration is the place for women leadership both in crisis management and in the public debate surrounding the pandemic response and gender parity.