Foreword

Abstract

Extract When the Covid-19 pandemic began, one frequently heard the phrase, ‘we’re all in this together’. We weren’t. The rich got richer and the poor got poorer (and sicker). Outside of medicine, the professional classes quickly adjusted to working from home (or a second home in the country), remaining relatively comfortable in a suddenly very unsafe world. But for the working class and the poor, and especially for working class and poor women and disadvantaged minority group members, at the intersection of low income/wealth and disadvantaged status the pandemic was and remains brutal. Professors Shreya Atrey and Sandra Fredman of Oxford, two of the leading theorists in the field of equality law (closely associated, respectively, with intersectionality and substantive equality), are to be commended for bringing us this diverse and discerning collection of authors, a mix of leading scholars and new voices from six continents. The essays in this excellent collection document how the pandemic exacerbated inequality exponentially around the globe, and how those who were already worse off to begin with sunk ever deeper into poverty and danger. For this alone the book is worth reading. But this is only the beginning.