@LauraBates re this answer to @nosswith - We at MNHQ are seeing some very similar accounts from our users about the disproportionate impact of COVID on women's lives and are planning to get stuck in - can we pick your brains?
[Post copied in below because we can no longer quote a quote, darn it]
Hi @nosswith
Yes, I’m concerned about the decisions being made by a government which seems to have very few women’s voices in decision making rooms, and one which is led by a man who has made a vast catalogue of sexist and racist statements in the past. Looking at the Coronavirus response is a good microcosm of this I think – we barely ever saw a single woman giving the daily briefings, and from what we know of the groups assembled to tackle the crisis, they were male dominated. As with any decision-making group, this has been reflected in the choices and decisions they have made. After lockdown was imposed it took the government over 2 weeks to announce a domestic violence campaign, for example, suggesting that rather than this being a proactive part of their planning, the potentially devastating impact of lockdown on domestic abuse victims only occurred to them afterwards, when pointed out by advocacy groups and charities. Yes, they reacted at that point with funding and an awareness campaign, but in that 19 day gap, 11 women, 2 children and 1 man had already been killed in suspected domestic abuse cases.)
To give another example, when the government announced that those who had been working from home were expected to get back to work, there was no corresponding concrete plan whatsoever to tackle the fact that there is still vastly less childcare available than would normally be in place, from before and after school clubs to holiday schemes to nurseries and child minders. The closest the government came to addressing this was when Boris Johnson airily said he was “sure employers will agree” to be reasonable if people were unable to come back to work immediately. And of course we know his confidence in employers is misplaced – women were 50% more likely to lose their jobs or quit during lockdown and we already know that 54,000 women a year lose their jobs due to maternity discrimination. I’m really concerned that we are teetering on the brink of a huge rollback of progress in gender equality and this government seems to be presiding over it either without noticing or without caring.
It is only going to get worse through the winter, with the testing system (particularly for those who can’t access drive through tests) often taking over a week for results to come back in my experience and that of dozens of other stories I’ve heard. Young children frequently get spikes in temperature, particularly through the winter, while teething or for a million other reasons. As it stands at the moment millions of parents are going to be stuck at home for repeated lengthy periods (and we know that women tend to take the brunt of this childcare responsibility and the impact on careers.) Do we think employers will still “agree” to support them?
The problem is localised too- in my local area, after the green light for reopening of pubs and playgrounds was announced by the government on the same day, pubs were open again at 6am the following morning, but it took over three weeks for my local authority to open playgrounds, despite the massive impact lockdown had had on child and maternal mental health.
Finally there are other examples where gender clearly hasn’t fed into the decision making process at all- the A level results fiasco being a clear example. Results were based in part on teacher predictions, yet there was no mention of gender bias in the guidance. But we know from repeated international studies that teachers tend to mark girls down and boys up in subjects like maths and science because of gender stereotypes ( www.nber.org/papers/w20909 ). This has been shown to have long term impact on career choices and prospects.
The thing that is most frustrating about all this is that there seems to be barely any coverage of these issues in the mainstream press, and subsequently little pressure on the government to address them.
Phew! It feels good to get that off my chest!