More women are falling through the cracks now. Time to take control.

There is mounting evidence from around the world that the Covid-19 pandemic has not been gender-neutral. In the developing world, women are bearing the brunt of the secondary effects of the pandemic—both economically and socially. In Bangladesh, like the rest of the world, women are more likely to be employed in the informal sector, making them more vulnerable to job losses and income shocks. Women, as healthcare workers and primary caregivers at home, have also been at the forefront of the battle against Covid-19.

According to World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2021, the overall gender gap in Bangladesh has widened by 0.7 percent compared to the previous year. The remarkable progress that Bangladesh had achieved over the past decades in ensuring gender parity in education, health and overall women's empowerment has been threatened by the pandemic fallout. This is alarming, because the inability to provide opportunities to and ensure rights of women and girls will inevitably slow down economic development. At the same time, it will hinder Bangladesh's pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Current evidence from around the world suggests that although men and women are equally likely to be infected by Covid-19, men are at higher risks of dying. However, the emergency healthcare measures adopted in response to the pandemic often cause a diversion of resources from areas such as reproductive and sexual healthcare, depriving women of vital support and potentially leading to higher maternal and neonatal deaths. This requires urgent attention, because disruptions in maternal and child healthcare services could reverse decades of progress while putting millions of lives at risk.

Due to the prevalence of high inequality in the intra-household allocation of resources, women in Bangladesh are more likely to experience food insecurity. According to the South Asian Network on Economic Modeling's (Sanem) nationwide household survey conducted in 2020, as a result of the pandemic, the average per capita food expenditure declined by 30 percent, 15 percent and 2 percent in extremely poor, moderately poor and vulnerable poor households, respectively. This reduction in food expenditure can further exacerbate the pre-existing gender differences in food insecurity, and result in poor health and decreased nutritional intake for women.

A major cause for concern in most developing countries, including Bangladesh, is the failure to ensure equal access to safe and effective Covid-19 vaccines. According to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), out of the 5.8 million people who received the first dose of the vaccine during the first vaccination campaign that ran from February 7 to April 26, only 38 percent recipients were females. This clearly depicts that even vaccine uptakes exhibit gender differences, which can lead to a profound setback for ensuring women's rights. In many cases, women's ability to access vaccines is limited due to limited mobility, restricted access to resources, lack of decision-making power, and lack of technological know-how. Hence it is crucial that the authorities responsible for vaccine management and distribution consider ways to overcome gender-related barriers to enabling access for women.    

In Bangladesh, the government proactively ordered the closing of all educational institutions on March 17, 2020, which exerted varying degrees of impact on education and student development. The transition to digital learning platforms was fraught with many difficulties, since we did not have much prior experience in distance learning. The government's initiative to broadcast lessons via television channels for primary and secondary-level students deprived children from households that do not have access to a television. Furthermore, many students from low-income families who live in remote areas and do not have adequate access to a digital device or internet connectivity have faced various challenges in continuing classes online. The gender gap in the use of digital technology is particularly prominent in the country. According to a Sanem study on gender and youth inclusiveness in technology, the percentage of female youth who have used the internet at least once in their lifetimes is only 24 percent at the urban level and 14 percent at the rural level. A recent study published in the GSMA Mobile Gender Gap Report 2021 showed that only 19 percent of women in Bangladesh use mobile internet, as opposed to 33 percent of men. Moreover, internet penetration among women in Bangladesh is also lower than India and Pakistan, where 30 percent and 21 percent of the female populations use mobile internet, respectively.

Evidence from past epidemics suggests that sustained school closures widen gender gaps in education by increasing female dropout rates, incidences of child marriages and unanticipated pregnancies. Even before the pandemic, Bangladesh was among the top 10 countries in the world having the highest rate of child marriage, with over 38 million child brides who were married before the age of 18. According to a Unicef study, 10 million more girls globally are at risk of becoming child brides over the next decade as a result of the pandemic.

In addition to the health and education related challenges, the Covid outbreak has had a major economic toll on women. This is because a high proportion of working women are engaged in informal, insecure and low-wage employment and in industries such as hospitality, travel, textile manufacturing, and retail, most of which have been severely affected by the pandemic. According to the Sanem employment and migration survey conducted in 2021, 16.1 percent of female wage earners lost their jobs, as opposed to 7.1 percent of male workers. Several studies also found that women entrepreneurs faced severe challenges in accessing the fiscal stimulus packages announced by the government for micro, small and medium enterprises.

Women looking to re-enter the workforce will also face the need to adapt to the emerging automation and digitisation trends that have transformed jobs and, in many cases, continuing employment may require the ability to telecommute. As men have greater access to digital devices and the internet and are more likely to be preferred for jobs that require remote work, women will be at a disadvantage and will face the need to reskill or change occupations. This essentially means that the pandemic's disproportionate impact on women's jobs and incomes will persist in the future and have long-term implications.

Simultaneously, pandemic induced quarantine and stay-at-home measures have caused the burden of domestic and unpaid care work to explode. According to International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates, women perform over three quarters of the total unpaid work globally. Similarly, a Sanem study conducted in 2019 found that working women spend almost 2.4 times more hours performing unpaid domestic work compared to working men in Bangladesh, while unemployed women spend 3.75 times more hours in unpaid domestic work compared to unemployed men. The struggle to balance between family and work responsibilities has been aggravated by the pandemic, discouraging women from participating in paid labour and worsening gender inequalities across the country.

As seen during other major economic, political and health crises, reduced access to justice and essential services as a result of the Covid crisis were associated with a rise in cases of gender-based violence around the world. Several studies in Bangladesh conducted during the pandemic confirmed the same. In the first 10 months of 2020 alone, Brac's Human Rights and Legal Aid Clinics reported to have received over 25,000 complaints of gender-based violence from across the country. While data is a crucial tool to understand and analyse the impact of pandemics such as Covid on gender-based violence, collecting data is difficult due to the victims' reluctance to report domestic violence, lack of awareness regarding human rights, and the inability to ensure privacy and safety of victims.  

Despite the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on the lives and livelihoods of women, they have been conspicuously absent from the policy discourse surrounding recovery plans. Gender-blind policies which fail to sufficiently address the challenges and vulnerabilities facing women will not be able to initiate an inclusive and sustainable recovery process. Developing targeted policies and initiatives to help women overcome the existing structural loopholes, and enhancing their participation in Covid recovery process and decision-making are imperative to ensure sustainable recovery. To enable better understanding of on-the-ground realities, it is crucial that women are included at all levels of decision-making. It is important to realise that women are a vital force in the post-pandemic recovery process. If the emerging gender gaps in education and employment are not addressed in time, the country will be deprived of half of its human potential.

Syeda Tasfia Tasneem is a former intern at South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (Sanem) and currently pursuing her Master's in development economics. This is the abridged version of an article written for Sanem's monthly publication, Thinking Aloud, September 2021 edition.