In the third episode of The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood's TV adaptation of her seminal work of dystopian fiction, we are given an insight to how the quasi-Christian totalitarian state known as The Republic of Gilead made slow but decisive incursions into the rights of women in the US, following the assassination of the president and most members of the US Congress.
On a single day, without announcement, the bank accounts of everyone identified by the martial state as female are frozen. They are unceremoniously fired from their jobs, and all their assets pass to their husbands or male next of kin.
In a chilling scene, that same evening the protagonist jokes to her well-meaning husband, "Hey, you have all my money now. Congratulations." He responds without missing a beat, "Come on. You know I'll take care of you."
I think of this exchange every time I read reports and see new data indicating that the Covid-19 pandemic is driving more women into unemployment because industries traditionally dominated by women have been most vulnerable in the lockdown, or because women are seen as the obvious choice when households must decide who will stay home and take over childcare and remote learning supervision when schools are closed.
The Stats SA announcement this week that GDP in SA fell by just over 16% in the second quarter of 2020 (an annualised decline of 51%) will almost certainly be followed by a Quarterly Labour Force Survey highlighting the disproportionate impact that the pandemic and the lockdown have had on women's economic participation.
Last month, a quarterly employment report by the youth employment accelerator Harambee indicated the devastating extent to which South African women have borne the brunt of Covid-19's economic impact. Of the
3-million job losses in the pandemic thus far, two-thirds were jobs occupied by women.
As I have previously stated in this column, it is an oft-repeated truism that Covid-19 is both exposing and intensifying existing inequalities in countries everywhere. Nowhere is this more evident than in the world's most unequal society.
In SA, the issue of gender inequality has been prominently and rightly focused on gender-based violence. The one-year anniversary of the brutal rape and murder of Uyinene Mrwetyana at the hands of Luyanda Botha was just two weeks ago, a terrible reminder of the continuing war on women every day, with little sign of abatement.
In SA, the issue of gender inequality has been prominently and rightly focused on gender-based violence.
But we must pay equal attention to the economic status and financial independence of women. Often this is connected to violence because access to financial resources is often a determining factor in women's ability to escape violence and sexual predation at the hands of persistent male abusers.
Women's economic participation is also key to achieving the overall economic prosperity of any society, as countless studies have shown. It is linked, among others, to higher GDP, better human development outcomes, greater spending on education and improved economic growth.
Gender inequality is bad for women and bad for societies at large.
The economic impact of Covid-19 on women is most pronounced in the US. Most of the jobs lost in April 2020 were occupied by women, pushing the women's unemployment rate three percentage points ahead of the men's equivalent. This period is being referred to as the "women's recession"; elsewhere, the "she-cession".
If we are to address the drivers of reduced status for women in South African society we need a whole-of-government approach that is transversal and centres gender equality and inclusivity in the priorities of every government department.
Gender-responsive budgeting is one such powerful tool, moving the priority of women's equality from a niche portfolio in the presidency to the National Treasury, where it belongs.
Gender budgeting would require government departments to allocate funding to and report on how their policies impact, improve the lives of, and drive equality for women in areas as diverse as the labour market, housing, sanitation, education and land reform. This would compel the kind of parliamentary oversight in which all members of parliament would be able to question how any departmental strategy or budget would materially improve social outcomes for girls and women.
According to the International Monetary Fund, gender budgeting empowers "fiscal authorities at any level of government [to] assess the needs of men and women; identify key outcomes or goals; plan, allocate, and distribute public funds; and monitor and evaluate achievements".
At the current rate, the World Economic Forum predicts that it will take almost 100 years to close the gender pay gap.
The economic fallout from Covid-19 is likely to worsen this devastating prediction unless we begin to harness the most innovative tools in the policy tool kit to arrest the decline of women's participation in the economy.
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