This submission is being made by The National Foundation for Australian Women (NFAW).

COVID-19 Submission 222 1 NFAW is dedicated to promoting and protecting the interests of Australian women, including intellectual, cultural, political, social, economic, legal, industrial and domestic spheres, and ensuring that the aims and ideals of the women’s movement and its collective wisdom are handed on to new generations of women. NFAW is a feminist organisation, independent of party politics and working in partnership with other women’s organisations.

It is now widely acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting women and men in different ways; it is not gender neutral. The by-products of economic shock and its impact on insecure employment have hit women particularly hard. Women are over-represented in industries most affected by the virus. April 2020 data confirms expectations: paid hours worked by women and men fell by 11.5 per cent and 7.5 per cent respectively. Female unemployment sat at 14.8 per cent; male unemployment at 12.9 per cent— and that data excludes women at home unable to look for work because of increased caring responsibilities.

Women are also disproportionately represented in frontline crisis response roles: 80 per cent of health professionals (including medical workers, pharmacists, social workers and medical scientists) are women. Seventy per cent of pathology services are provided by women. Women predominate in most of the essential support services and among the workers that cannot stay home: the teachers, aged and childcare workers and hospital cleaners. Social services are under pressure from the virus and most social service providers are women: social workers, mental health support workers, frontline domestic and family violence workers, child support workers.

Women are carrying the greater share of increased unpaid caring responsibilities during lockdown and staged recovery. When schools close, travel is restricted and aged relations are at risk, COVID-19 exacerbates existing inequities. The looming end of “free” childcare could mean that yet more households decide it is too expensive for the mother to continue to work, particularly as service industries in which women predominate will be last and slowest to recover. More families may now prefer to keep aging parents out of the aged care system, adding to the caring responsibilities of women. With schools closed and other childcare arrangements, such as assistance from family and friends, discouraged due to social distancing measures, single mothers in particular will have less ability to work and are at greater risk of poverty.

In short, women are losing paid hours and gaining unpaid hours, and these outcomes are causally related. All of this should ring alarm bells for any government that believes increasing women’s workforce participation leads to better living standards for individuals and families, improves the bottom line of businesses and is a significant driver of national economic growth.

 

 

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