A North East business group has called on the Government to take action on the disproportionate impact the coronavirus pandemic has had on women.
Alix Bolton, chair of the North East England Chamber of Commerce’s Women’s Leadership Forum, has written to Equalities Minister Liz Truss, outlining a range of ways in which the pandemic has impacted more on women.
In the letter, Ms Bolton said that women are more likely to have lost their jobs during the pandemic and to have seen reductions in working hours.
She said childcare responsibilities had fallen more on women during the various local and national lockdowns, and that the gender pay gap was likely to have risen.
Ms Bolton has also highlighted the rise in domestic abuse during lockdown, and the problems faced by many charities in the North East.
She said: “The economic impact of Covid has the potential to entrench inequalities in society, we need to use the recovery as an opportunity to tackle gender inequalities and increase the number of female-led businesses and start-ups.
“If we allow Covid to increase gender inequalities in the North East, then the levelling up agenda has failed.”
Data from the Office for National Statistics has shown that the average hours worked per work by women in the North East fell by 2.7 hours this year, the largest reduction in the UK. Research by women’s groups has suggested that many women have lost their jobs or had to take reduced hours during the pandemic because of their childcare responsibilities.
The forum has called for a number of measures to improve the situation for women, including better support for start-ups, retaining the £20 increase in Universal Credit past April and better funding for the social care sector, where staff are predominantly female.
