It is true that “Covid-19 has turned back the clock on working women’s lives” (10 November), but that does not mean it has to stay that way. Covid has also awakened us to the crying need for more investment in the public services that constitute our social infrastructure.
Ploughing money into physical infrastructure means “more of the new jobs will probably go to men”, as Gaby Hinsliff says. Investing in social infrastructure instead will not only provide jobs for women, but far more jobs overall. And these could be well-paid, sustainable, long-term jobs.
Our research shows that investing enough in child and social care to enable those sectors to employ 10% of our workforce, like in Scandinavia, would create 2 million jobs, more than twice as many as an equivalent investment in construction. This would help close the gender employment gap.
A crisis in which women are losing their jobs far faster than men requires a more thoughtful stimulus response than just the usual kneejerk choice of investing in construction, where only one in eight workers are women.
Dr Jerome De Henau
Prof Susan Himmelweit
Open University
