All the money that women across the globe missed out on last year due to pandemic-related job losses and childcare obligations is more than the combined value of economies in 98 countries.
That’s a new estimate from the global charity Oxfam, which projects that women worldwide missed out on at least $800 billion in income last year.
The projections are new measurements of an increasingly familiar aspect of the pandemic: women have suffered an outsized toll from its economic fallout in the U.S. and other corners of the globe.
“For women in every country on every continent, along with losing income, unpaid care work has exploded,” said Gabriela Bucher, executive director of Oxfam International. “As care needs have spiked during the pandemic, women —the shock absorbers of our societies — have stepped in to fill the gap, an expectation so often imposed by sexist social norms.”
***Honduras, Iceland , Cyprus and Senegal are some of the countries included in the list of 98 countries with a combined gross dometic product equivalent of approximately $800 billion, according to Oxfam researchers.***
Oxfam arrived at its projections by looking at analysis from the United Nation’s International Labour Organization (ILO).
64 million women lost jobs globally last year, the UN agency determined. While 80 million men lost jobs last year, women had a 5% job loss rate compared to men, who experienced a 3.9% job loss rate, ILO said.
Oxfam tallied its projection by using ILO data on monthly earnings by sex in 50 countries, and multiplied the figure by the number of women working in 2019 versus 2020.
Oxfam acknowledges the $800 billion projection is just an estimate, but the damage is real.
