Pandemic Impact on Women: Budget must reflect govt’s relief efforts

The Covid-19 pandemic has negatively affected women more than men in terms of monetary and other losses, economists and women rights activists say.

To achieve a resilient recovery, it is vital that the allocations in the 2021-22 national budget reflect the consequences of the pandemic on women, addressing the challenges they faced in terms of employment, healthcare, gender-based violence, and greater unpaid care work, they added.

Fawzia Moslem, president of Bangladesh Mahila Parishad, said the gender budget is not just a number, but a part of the national development targets as women constitute half the country's population.

"This year's budget must reflect the efforts of the government to mitigate women's challenges from Covid-19 and meet the international commitments, such as Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women [CEDAW] and Sustainable Development Goals," she said.

Fawzia also insisted that there must be a system for monitoring and evaluation of the gender budget to see whether the amounts allocated for women are actually targeted for their empowerment or not.

Prof Sayema Haque Bidisha, an economics professor at Dhaka University and also the research director of South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (SANEM), has long been outspoken about the economic challenges women faced during the pandemic and what support they needed in the upcoming budget to address the challenges.

According to Sayema, since a large number of women have become "new poor" during the pandemic, this year's budget must have the option of increasing the coverage of the government's social safety net programmes, along with hiking the per-capita allocation, so that women who are currently living below the poverty line can be benefitted from the budget.

"This can simply be providing a sewing machine to a woman in a slum or arranging a small tea stall for her so that she can survive."

The DU teacher's recent study titled "Impact of Covid-19 on Women" showed that 16.1 percent of the female wage employees lost their jobs between March and December 2020, while almost 50 percent faced a pay cut.

There must be prioritisation of training on alternative livelihood for them, both in urban and rural areas, Sayema said.

The study also showed that around 63 percent of the self-employed women saw a decrease in their profit or sales during that period, while more than 33 percent had to close their businesses temporarily.

She said the government must ensure that these female cottage and micro-entrepreneurs can access the stimulus packages designed for them since they hardly access the formal banking channels.

"And for them, the entire process of disbursement should be sorted out again. For instance, the package money can be disbursed by the micro-financers as they have wide access to the grassroots female micro and cottage entrepreneurs," Sayema added.

Experts also said unpaid care work still being unrecognised is holding women back.

According to a recent study by Prof Sharmind Neelormi of Jahangirnagar University, about 78 percent of the women-headed households, mostly representing the informal sectors, faced an economic crisis during the pandemic due to job loss, increased household responsibilities, and interruption in childcare support services at the workplace.

It also showed that 75 percent of the homemakers used to spend 3-5 hours a day for household work before the pandemic. Of them, 37.8 percent spent more time on household work than they previously did.

For employed women, 85 percent spent more than four hours a day for unpaid care work.

According to experts, it is necessary to include women's unpaid care work in national GDP estimation and care work to the System of National Accounts (SNA) of the coming fiscal year.

Shaheen Anam, executive director of Manusher Jonno Foundation, said there must be monetisation of women's unpaid care work along with reduction of their workload by redistributing their responsibilities so that they can get a little time for being self-dependent.

EDUCATION ON THE LINE

Although the pandemic prompted educational institutions to conduct their classes online and on television channels, it has been seen that female students lag behind in participating in distant learning and online classes, compared to their male counterparts.

For example, a 2020 SANEM study shows that only 6.7 percent of female-headed households participated in online classes, and compared to male students, there were more challenges for female students in terms of unavailability of device, insufficient internet facility, lack of mental preparation, and not being accustomed to technology.

Prof Sayema said when a family in Bangladeshi society faces a scarcity of digital devices or internet connections, the male students will inevitably get the preference.

Experts also believe that the impact of the gender technology gap and learning deficiency, along with income loss of the families and an increasing number of child marriage, will cause a dropout of a large number of female students.

"This is why this year's budget must focus on bridging the gender digital divide by providing women with gadgets and connections in a subsidised way," said Shaheen Anam.

"Besides, the government should keep in mind that increasing the education budget will not necessarily solve the problem, unless there are enough interventions to bring them back to classrooms by ensuring stipends for them and incentives for their parents," she added.

Although child marriage has long been prevalent in Bangladesh, school closures, economic downturn, and interruption in support services for girls during the pandemic forced many parents to marry off their underage girls.

A 2020 Brac study found child marriage increased up to 220 percent in July-September last year. A quick assessment by MJF from April to October last year revealed that 48 percent of child brides were aged between 13-15 years.

The MJF study also showed that at least 5,089 respondents had unexpected pregnancies during the pandemic due to the demand of husbands and in-laws, husband's home-staying, and disruption in family planning services.

Family planning expert Monjun Nahar said the family planning budget must be increased, and the government must ensure proper utilisation of the budget, identifying the gaps and challenges.

GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE

Violence against women was more prevalent during the pandemic than ever before as leading rights body Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK) data shows at least 1,627 women were raped or gang-raped during the pandemic. Of the victims, 53 were killed after rape and 14 died by suicide in 2020.

In terms of domestic violence, the number of incidents was 37,912 in ASK's working area from April to September last year.

However, the pandemic limits survivors' access to formal institutions to report incidents of violence.

Courts were shut and NGOs providing legal aid had to close their physical spaces. The local authorities became burdened with relief distribution and the police were busy implementing lockdown measures.

Mahila Parishad President Fawzia said this year's gender budget must have enough allocations for law enforcement agencies and courts so that they can provide better services to victims.

"In addition, attention and allocation are also needed to rehabilitate the survivors of gender-based violence," she observed.