The impacts of COVID-19 on women’s economic autonomy in Latin America and the Caribbean

The impacts of COVID-19 on women’s economic autonomy in Latin America and the Caribbean

March 8, 2021

The impacts of the coronavirus pandemic have not been gender-neutral. The crisis brought by COVID-19 has deepened pre-existing gender inequalities. This document analyzes the measures adopted by governments in Latin America and the Caribbean to mitigate the consequences of the pandemic, with the objective of determining the extent to which they recognize, make visible and/or focus on the impacts of the crisis in the life of girls and women.

This research is based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the measures registered in the COVID-19 Global Gender Response Tracker (GGR Tracker) related to women's economic security and their unpaid care and domestic work. The GGR tracker has registered the gender sensitive measures adopted by governments to face the impacts of the pandemic.

Whilst Latin America is the region with the highest relative number of gender sensitive measures regarding related to women's economic security and their unpaid care and domestic work, the analysis reveals that government’s interventions in this two dimensions have been limited in the number of measures implemented, fragmentary with respect to the areas addressed, and heterogeneous in their reach. Without more specific interventions targeting the economic autonomy of women during the pandemic, it will be difficult to overcome the reversal of decades of efforts in the promotion of gender equality.