RESISTIRÉ’s first report on Covid policies and societal responses is now available!

The RESISTIRÉ team, supported by its wide network of national researchers, has concluded its first cycle of in-depth research on inequalities caused by COVID-19 policies. The Summary Report mapping cycle 1 is the first deliverable of the project to be published and shared with the wider public.

The report describes the gender dimensions of the policy and societal initiatives implemented in Europe to counter the pandemic and their consequences on inequalities. Its finding will inform the following research step, where work packages 3 and 4 will focus on developing quantitative and qualitative indicators of inequality, analysing existing data, and identifying gaps to inform further data collection These quantitative and qualitative insights will then inform the co-creation process in the open studios.

Responses to Covid do not take into account potential risks of exacerbating gendered inequalities and other intersecting vulnerabilities

During this first research step, our network of 29 national researchers has mapped policy and societal responses in the EU27 (excluding Estonia and Malta), Iceland, the UK, Serbia, and Turkey. In their report, they find that many of the responses adopted by countries did not take into account potential risks of exacerbating gendered inequalities and other intersecting vulnerabilities such as gender identity, nationality, sex, social status, and age.

Out of the nine policy domains covered by the project, the national researchers found that the only domain where gendered aspects were taken into consideration was gender-based violence, with many civil society initiatives and policies addressing the increase in GBV cases resulting from the restriction of movement and lockdown measures. While some countries have responded with policies to raise awareness, strengthen remote support tools, and provide funds to organisations running services and shelters, we also found several others where this issue was not addressed at all.

Another key area of research was work and access to income. In many countries, measures were gradually introduced to mitigate the effects of workplace closures, the need to stay at home, and rising unemployment. However, such measures have often targeted limited segments of the population, leaving specific groups of people and, in particular, women in a difficult position.

The gender care gap as a domain is closely linked to that of labour. We found that measures to contain the virus have had enormous effects on care activities and unpaid work led by women. In addition, the criteria for accessing incentives and benefits have often penalised specific groups, such as the self-employed, people with atypical work contracts, and informal workers, who often are migrant workers. In many cases, measures to address this issue were heteronormative, referring mainly to “fathers and mothers”.

We observed that the pandemic policies impacted the human rights of various categories of people in many ways. In some countries, asylum seekers and migrants, especially those living in camps, were often discriminated against and denied access to essential services. Many women were denied fundamental birthing rights. The Hungarian government’s approval of a constitutional amendment restricting the rights of LGBTQI+ communities during the state of emergency represents an extreme case of how public authorities were able to misuse the pandemic situation in the human rights domain.

An implicit representation of society made up of “traditional” families

The analysis of the national reports and of the mapped policies clearly showed how the priority for policymakers, especially during the first phase of the pandemic, was to balance the protection of public health with maintaining economic production. In several cases, the national researchers pointed out that policies were underpinned by an implicit representation of society as cisgender and made up of “traditional” families, where people enjoy full citizenship rights and have standard employment contracts, and families are composed of two parents and one or two children.

In this layout and within the mapped policies, women were regarded as primarily responsible for unpaid care activities, but also for performing essential jobs such as healthcare workers, domestic workers, cashiers.

Despite the fact that gender mainstreaming has been adopted as an approach in EU policymaking for over two decades, we continue to see that policies are in fact largely not mainstreamed at the national level.

To alleviate the impacts of COVID-19 policies, many initiatives have been developed by civil society organisations – NGOs, local governments, or citizens. A team of national researchers from the RESISTIRÉ project has collected and highlighted a set of particularly relevant initiatives in 27 European countries and in Iceland, Serbia, the United Kingdom and Turkey. The initiatives currently cover eight specific domains: gender-based violence, the labour market, the economy, gender-pay and pension gaps, gender care gaps, decision-making and politics, environmental justice, human and fundamental rights.

In Serbia, KonekTaS platform produced guidelines to draw attention to the vulnerable situation of women and children victims of gender-based and domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The various restrictions to prevent the spread of COVID-19 required innovative solutions from social workers to adapt their practices. Teleworking was quite a challenge for social workers, and even more so as the needs for their services rapidly increased. Quarantine and psychological tensions caused by the pandemic led to an increase in domestic violence, while women and children living in abusive households saw their conditions deteriorating. Forced contact between victims and perpetrators during lockdown, women kept hostage in violent relationships and unable, but also change in family dynamics, challenges related to gender roles of women and men, the reorganisation of child-care responsibilities, and the financial impact of the crisis on household were among the most difficult working environments for social workers in Serbia.

Recommendations on the platform aimed to map the available resources for rapid response during the Covid-19 crisis, with safety plans for victims of domestic violence and violence against women.

The guidelines were created within the volunteer service of the Faculty of Political Science (FPN), University of Belgrade, with the support of UNICEF and USAID offices in Belgrade. This service is an interactive online platform that brings together practitioners, teachers, and students of social work and social policy to share new theoretical and practical knowledge, professional experiences and dilemmas and strategies for overcoming obstacles in everyday work. FPN KonekTas brings together associates who want to build together a safe, supportive, inclusive and stimulating gathering place for learning and research, for connecting and exchanging with colleagues and for coordinated collection and distribution of information relevant to all practitioners and theorists in social work.

The direct target group was social workers but the guidelines were relevant for social work students and policy makers too. One of the initiative’s main achievements has been connecting the academic community with social work practitioners. Thanks to the initiative, students were introduced to the potential problems and challenges faced by social workers working with victims of gender-based violence and at the same time could access solutions and clear instructions for dealing with difficult cases.

Read more about the platform on UNICEF’s website

Photo credit: UNICEF