By Lilly Adjorkor Adjei
Accra – 2 June, 2020<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the advances we made [are] in terms of equality [but] now so many women are going to end up back in their homes,\u201d Laura Baena, the Spanish gender activist\/campaigner has said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to be the big losers in this [novel Coronavirus] crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n
She was speaking to The Guardian of the UK on 29 May, about a petition launched by Yo No Renuncio, a social movement group.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe messages I\u2019m getting are desperate,\u201d she added. \u201cThe objective right now is survival”.<\/p>\n
Her message resonates with many women across the globe.<\/p>\n
But how did income disparities for men and women come about?<\/p>\n
In an article titled , \u201cThe origins of our gender roles\u201d published 11th April 2013 on Aljazeera.com, Alison Booth postulated that the transition from labor-intensive shifting cultivation, which uses hand-held devices such as the hoe and the digging stick to a more capital-intensive plough cultivation required upper-body strength to control the plough.<\/p>\n
This supposedly gave men a comparative advantage relative to women, resulting in a division of labor in which men worked in the fields while women specialized in work in and around the home.<\/p>\n
A gender-based division of labor then gave rise to a culture which codified women’s place as the home – they became designated \u201chome makers\u201d.<\/p>\n
Women noticed the disparity in education, earnings and how men treated them and began to fight for rights: the right to vote, the right to be brought into the formal workplace.<\/p>\n
Successes chalked in shaking off the tenterhooks of the \u201chome maker\u201d then paved the way for fights for shared responsibilities and equal pay as women flooded the workforce.<\/p>\n
The Institute for Women\u2019s Policy Research reported that analysis of women\u2019s and men\u2019s earnings over 15 years found that women made just half (49 percent) of what men earned.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, if change continues at the same slow pace as it has been for the past fifty years, it will take 40 years\u2014or until 2059\u2014for women to finally reach pay parity.<\/p>\n
For women of color, the rate of change is even slower: Hispanic women will have to wait until 2224 and African American women will wait until 2130 for equal pay.<\/p>\n
In Ghana, where majority of women have always been “home makers”, and illiteracy is about 85 percent, emancipation will certainly take not less than the projected figures for Hispanic and African American Women \u2013 at least 110 years!<\/p>\n
Awumbila Mariama in “Gender equality and poverty in Ghana: implications for poverty reduction strategies” delineated that women make up 43.1% of the \u201ceconomically active population in Ghana\u201d, the majority working in the informal sector particularly, \u201cin food crop farming yet women only accounted for 26.1% of farm owners or managers\u201d.<\/p>\n
In crop farming, the majority of women work in weeding, planting, and selling food crops according to several other sources.<\/p>\n
Outside of farming, women employees typically work for low wages in the informal sector, but they control the retail trade and cooked food trading without question.<\/p>\n
The job loss effects of the pandemic may therefore just pass such workers by though they may never have any so called glass ceiling to break, ever.<\/p>\n
The current COVID-19 setback threatens to erode all the successes chalked by women over the centuries, to avoid being labelled \u201chome makers\u201d and then being confined to the home.<\/p>\n
In the bid to battle the pandemic, non-essential workers are forced to work from home whiles schools are also under lock and key.<\/p>\n
The situation is however affecting males and females unequally.<\/p>\n
The burdens of the home office and home schooling together with additional household duties and extra cooking, is being unequally carried by women.<\/p>\n
Thus, women are \u201cback in the habit\u201d \u2013 into their traditional roles in the home which they will struggle to shake off once the pandemic is over.<\/p>\n
A study carried out for the Oireachtas (the Irish legislature), concluded that women have less time to carry out paid work from home compared to men due to the closure of schools and nurseries.<\/p>\n
It concluded that a \u201clikely immediate consequence\u201d of the situation was that \u201cwomen\u2019s productivity in employment will suffer more than men\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n
Longer-term, it said women could expect \u201cpotentially fewer economic opportunities … and a wider gender remuneration gap.\u201d<\/p>\n
In deciding on keeping their jobs, women are now torn between resorting to elderly parents as nannies despite the health risks involved or leaving their children at home to go earn a living.<\/p>\n
Feedback; ato@writersghana.com or contact Lilly on 057 867 3383; Instagram, @lil_lillyaa; LinkedIn, Lilly Adjei; WhatsApp 057 867 3383.<\/p>\n\n\n
Writers and Shakespeares Ghana Limited exist to be a moral and intellectual guide to the best practice of PR and integrated communications around the world, beginning with Ghana.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"