Overview Article - http://www.socialwatch.org/node/18442
Direct Link to Full 48-Page 2019 Report:
https://apps.who.int/gpmb/assets/annual_report/GPMB_Annual_Report_English.pdf
The Lancet ~ Volume 395, ISSUE 10229, P1018-1020, March 28, 2020
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30110-0/fulltext
By Asha Herten-Crabb & Sara E. Davies
In September, 2019, Alan Donnelly and Ilona Kickbusch called for a chief economist at WHO (1)
Such a position, they argued, would enable WHO to better advocate for greater recognition of, and thus action on, the interdependency of health and the economy. We support this proposal: recognition of the interdependence of health and the economy is vital for WHO to achieve its mandate: “the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health…without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition”. (2)
Given this mandate, WHO should be more ambitious than the appointment of one economist. A more strategic and enlightened approach, especially in the aftermath of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic (3) would be for WHO to embrace and articulate a feminist economic agenda.
Women face increased risk of violence, loss of livelihoods and other threats under the pandemic. © Unsplash/Tam Wai
Direct Link to Full 9-Page March 2020 UNFPA Document:
https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/resource-pdf/COVID-19_A_Gender_Lens_Guidance_Note.pdf
https://www.unfpa.org/news/pandemic-rages-women-and-girls-face-intensified-risks
19 March 2020 - UNITED NATIONS, New York – As the COVID-19 pandemic rages around the world, governments are taking unprecedented measures to limit the spread of the virus, ramping up health system responses and announcing movement restrictions affecting millions.
But amid these efforts, policymakers must not lose sight of the vulnerabilities of women and girls, which have been exacerbated by the crisis, says a UNFPA guidance note released today has rapidly spread around the world since it was discovered late last year, appears most deadly among elderly populations and people with pre-existing medical conditions.
Accurate and complete sex-disaggregated data are still needed to understand whether and how women and men experience infection, complication and death risks differently.Yet even now, it is clear that women and girls face a variety of risk factors that must urgently be addressed.
“Disease outbreaks affect women and men differently,” says the new UNFPA guidance document, which covers how gender is playing a role in the unfolding pandemic. “Pandemics make existing gender inequalities for women and girls worse, and can impact how they receive treatment and care.”
Photo: María Elena Díaz Espinoza, a waste picker in Lima,Peru, collects recyclables on the streets in the neighborhood of Los Olivos. Credit: Juan Arredondo/Getty Images
WIEGO – Women in Informal Employment Globalizing & Organizing
By Laura Alfers
23 March 2020 - “Flattening the curve” has become a mantra of the COVID-19 pandemic — but calls for staying home and social distancing have starkly emphasized the inequalities in our society, including amongst workers.
Social distancing and staying home are real possibilities for middle-class office workers covered by social security. They are much less achievable for unprotected informal workers who fall between the cracks, excluded from formal work-related protections as well as from state social assistance programmes that target the very poor and those outside the labour market.
“I am afraid of the coronavirus,” said an informal worker in Mexico, “but I am more afraid of dying of hunger if there is no work.”
This stark reality is likely to be particularly pronounced for women informal workers, who will have to cope with a greater care burden while attempting to put food on the table.
Harvard Business Review - From the March–April 2020 Issue
https://hbr.org/2020/03/whats-really-holding-women-back
What’s Really Holding Women Back from More Progress at Work
By Robin J. Ely & Irene Padavic
As scholars of gender inequality in the workplace, we are routinely asked by companies to investigate why they are having trouble retaining women and promoting them to senior ranks. It’s a pervasive problem. Women made remarkable progress accessing positions of power and authority in the 1970s and 1980s, but that progress slowed considerably in the 1990s and has stalled completely in this century.
Ask people why women remain so dramatically underrepresented, and you will hear from the vast majority a lament—an unfortunate but inevitable “truth”—that goes something like this: High-level jobs require extremely long hours, women’s devotion to family makes it impossible for them to put in those hours, and their careers suffer as a result. We call this explanation the work/family narrative. In a 2012 survey of more than 6,500 Harvard Business School alumni from many different industries, 73% of men and 85% of women invoked it to explain women’s stalled advancement. Believing this explanation doesn’t mean it’s true, however, and our research calls it seriously into question.
