COVID-19 will have a great impact on gender gap

Isabel Pla is a professor at the Faculty of Economics, director of the Feminist Economics Research Unit and a member of the University Institute for Women Studies. Her research is focused on thefair transition towards a feminist economy, as she explains inher video forthe Equality Unit.

"If we focus on the widespread division of work, the impact of COVID-19 on it has been very important", explains. "On the one hand, if we refer to paid jobs and risk ones, women are in the front row since they take care of elderly and disabled people or they serve the public in supermarkets". According to Professor Pla, these are high-risk and underpaid jobs with precarious working conditions.

Regarding nonessential jobs, mainly in the service sector and highly feminized, the degree of financial vulnerability has increased, explains Isabel Pla.

Finally, the Director of the Feminist Economics Research Unit, Isabel Pla, refers to unpaid care jobs in which the COVID-19 impact on the workload has been important as well. "All studies reveal that women are enduring higher workloads because not only are the children at home, but also elderly or disabled people who cannot go to the day centre. These caregiving tasks have put women in the front line, who are considered to be essential caregivers, primary caregivers", Pla points out.

According to the Professor, this generalized division of work indicates that women's situation is more precarious and how COVID-19 will have a great impact on gender gap in terms of workload.

As for the situation at universities, many women report significant stress and loss of productivity and "the impact that is having on academic women can already be noticed, who are sending fewerarticles and publications to reviews".

The Feminist Economics Research Unit calls on the reconstruction plans to get out of the COVID-19 multiple crisis to take into account the principles of the feminist economics. Precisely because they are the ones that allow to put life at the centre of economic analyses and not the markets.