Experts Say COVID Started A "Shecession". These 4 Things Could Help Women Recover

Since the pandemic began, women made up more than half of workplace exits in the US.

Though some economies around the world are slowly recovering from the beating they took from the coronavirus pandemic, many are still not benefitting all citizens equally.

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For example, women in the US lost more jobs than men. A February 2021 report says that women made up nearly 56% of workforce exits since the start of the pandemic, despite being only 48% of the workforce.

And even as many men are getting back to work, many women are still unemployed. C. Nicole Mason of the think tank Institute for Women’s Policy Research even coined the term "shecession" to describe this economic downturn. 

Some government agencies, nonprofits, and NGOs have drafted recommendations to put the nations on a track to economic equity. There’s the very influential plan from Hawaii’s Commission of the Status of Women, one co-written by University of Toronto academics, recommendations from UN Women, and many more.

Here are four things some experts think might create an economic recovery for all:

1. Whether it's raising kids or helping out with aging relatives, women are doing more caregiving than men. Valuing both paid and unpaid caretakers would help women bridge the gap.

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COVID-19 increased the amount of unpaid work on many women’s plates.

Women in the US are more likely than men to be in caretaker roles within their own family units and to work as paid care workers, whether that be caring for children or elderly or sick relatives. For example, a 2020 AARP report found that unpaid caregivers of adults were overwhelmingly female, at 61% compared to 39% of men.  

The status of women in unpaid caregiver roles has impacted the American workforce. Employers are especially having trouble finding low-wage workers, partly due to a lack of childcare options. A recent Indeed survey reported that 20% of lower-wage workers cite childcare responsibilities as a reason for not returning to the workforce. 

Mignon Duffy, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, says that investing in care work needs to a part of a feminist economic recovery.

This includes “investing in childcare and investing in voluntary care, as well as investing in things like paid family leave, paid sick leave for all workers, minimum wage for all workers, which would include a lot of care workers who are on the lower end of the wage spectrum,” says Duffy.

While the federal CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan do address caregiving, Duffy says their temporary nature and failures to address all inequity issues are a problem.

“If it's still women that are leaving the labor force in large numbers, if it's still women that are taking the leaves — whether they're paid or doing the care work — it doesn't address the fundamental inequalities in the distribution of the work again by gender, but also by race significantly and migration status,” says Duffy. 

2. And universal healthcare could be a big win for women, especially for those who lost coverage due to job losses in the pandemic.

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Coronavirus vaccines and tests were thankfully free in the US for anyone that wanted one (eventually). However, supporters of a feminist economic recovery believe we need universal healthcare to really recover from this crisis.

“The system that we have that connects healthcare coverage to employment is really problematic for a lot of people,” says Duffy. “That became really clear during this economic crisis that was precipitated by COVID when people lose their jobs and then they are soon after going to lose their healthcare coverage during a major health crisis.”

To achieve a recovery that doesn’t leave people in the same vulnerable position, detaching healthcare from employment is necessary, Duffy adds.

There are several other benefits to this, Duffy argues: First, if healthcare is guaranteed without employment, essential workers won’t feel compelled to put their health at risk and work during a pandemic. Secondly, it gives people the ability to work part time in order to have time for unpaid care work. (Let’s face it — many working parents have been struggling during the pandemic.)

And finally, “[Healthcare] should be a right, not a privilege, and the core thing about detaching healthcare from paid employment would really support gender equity and support a strong care infrastructure,” says Duffy. 

3. A plan from the Hawaii State Comission on the Status of Women calls to address gender-based violence and give assistance to people who have experienced financial abuse during the pandemic.

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Experts fear that gender-based violence had sky-rocketed during stay-at-home orders because people were stuck at home with their abusers. 

As businesses open up, domestic violence is still an issue. Khara Jabola-Carolus, executive director of Hawaii State Commission on the Status of Women, says she’s hearing that there has been an increase in domestic violence within Hawaii as shelter-in-place orders are lifted. 

“[Abusers] got to be more controlling than they ever had been,” says Jabola-Carolus. “They got used to this control of constantly being able to track you and monitor you. So as things are opening up, it's changing that, and that's causing more conflict and tension, because it's breaking that level of control that [was] normalized during COVID.”

Jabola-Carolus and her team wrote a plan called “Building Bridges, Not Walking on Backs: A Feminist Economic Recovery Plan for COVID-19.”

The report recommends that the government address gender-based violence by doing things like helping women achieve financial independence. To prevent reliance on abusive partners, the report suggests adopting a living wage ($24.80 per hour for single mothers), universal basic income, paid sick days, and more.

“Because of the debilitating amount of violence, the debilitating burden of caring for the ill and for homebound children has not been alleviated; the labor force cannot recover or return to normal without new structures in place to offset those challenges,” says Jabola-Carolus.   

4. And finally, UN Women says that giving women financial assistance, especially those in vulnerable positions, would help those who have been hit hardest by the pandemic.

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The United Nations Women, a UN entity, wrote in an article that women are overrepresented in the industries hit hardest by the pandemic like food service, retail, and entertainment. Forty percent of employed women (510 million women globally) work in a hard-hit industry compared to the 36.6% of employed men.

The entity recommended that governments mitigate the negative impacts of COVID-19 by providing direct income assistance and support for women workers.

“Introduce economic support packages, including direct cash-transfers, expanded unemployment benefits, tax breaks, and expanded family and child benefits for vulnerable women and their families,” reads the UN Women article.

To support women workers, UN Women suggests expanding access to affordable childcare and bridging the gender pay gap. (For perspective, women in the US make 82 cents for every dollar made by men, accounting for a median annual gender pay gap of $10,157.)

Before the pandemic, women in the US were 35% more likely to live in poverty than men in 2019. Of course, that has been exacerbated by the pandemic. 

So, if governments assist women, they’ll assist those living in poverty too.

Though some argue that public assistance may make people not want to work, a recent study on a cash assistance program in Indonesia found the opposite.

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The belief that public assistance leads to laziness and dependency has long persisted around the world. Some research has suggested that public assistance does the opposite, however. 

For example, a World Economic Forum study on Indonesia’s cash assistance program (Program Keluarga Harapan or PKH) showed better health among the country’s children, increased school enrollment, and no signs that workers had stopped working. 

“There are many mainstream economists who have gamed this out — the amount that we spend per public assistance actually comes back double fold to the state,” says Jabola-Carolus. “Even if you don't care about the human argument, the economic argument is there to create robust public assistance.” 

How have you seen issues like caregiving and healthcare affect women in your life during the pandemic? Share your stories in the comments.

And for more stories about life and money, check out the rest of our personal finance posts.