“Nearly 70 percent of the lowest wage workers in the United States are women,” said Nicole Berner, General Counsel to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) at a recent event on the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on women and essential workers, hosted by the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership.

While essential or key workers have been vital to the functioning of society throughout the pandemic, they have also been among the most underpaid and undervalued. Those tasked with caring for and feeding communities during the pandemic were most often denied sick leave, family leave, hazard pay, basic protective equipment, and legal protections, said Berner.

Women disproportionately make up the majority of the essential workforce. Women are more likely to work in sectors such as home care, child care, and fast food, which are largely non-unionized and more prone to workplace harassment, abuse, and violations, said Berner. For instance, in the United Kingdom, women are almost twice as likely to be working in key worker occupations as men, said Nikki Pound, National Women’s Officer for the Trades Union Congress (TUC). In addition, people of color are overrepresented in essential work compared to their white counterparts, she said.

The caregiving economy represents one sector dominated by women and hit hardest by COVID-19. Like other essential workers, caregivers, particularly those for the elderly, continued going to work and could not socially distance, said Berner. Women care workers also began facing a caregiving crisis in their own homes as schools, child care centers, and other safety nets closed down, she said. “We know for women, and particularly mums, the combination of being on the front line and juggling their own caring responsibilities has left many feeling completely broken,” said Pound.

In Austria, where approximately 95 percent of live-in care workers are women, care workers face additional inequalities and vulnerabilities, said Michael Leiblfinger, Independent Researcher and PhD student at Johannes Kepler University Linz. Unlike other key workers in the country, care workers are most often migrants, presenting other potential risks and challenges for an already vulnerable group, he said. Similarly, in the United States, a significant proportion of low-wage workers are undocumented and excluded from social safety net programs, said Berner.

Although individual employers can and should create better working conditions and policies for their employees, these micro-level changes are ultimately not enough, said Berner. There needs to be national policy on paid family leave, paid subsidies for child care, increased occupational health and safety standards, and a higher federal minimum wage, she said. Other policy measures to support workers include reversing public sector pay cuts and removing eligibility thresholds for benefits, said Pound.

By exacerbating structural inequalities in the workforce, COVID-19 has disproportionately affected women, who represent the majority of essential workers and caregivers. Improving the rights of and conditions for workers will require systemic policies that increase investment in the labor system and safeguard benefits and protections, such as child care and paid leave, for workers and their families. “Change has to come from a government level. It can’t be left to individual employers, it has to be a policy,” said Berner.

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