Women are more likely to experience long Covid but, once again, the system of support doesn’t meet their needs

The emergence of long Covid has exposed yet another way in which the pandemic has disproportionately affected women in Scotland. Long Covid describes symptoms that persist four weeks after contracting the virus. A TUC survey found that those with long-term Covid symptoms experienced brain fog (72%), shortness of breath (70%), difficulty concentrating (62%) and memory problems (54%). These symptoms have led to workers having to reduce their working hours, or stop working altogether.

Recent analysis found that over two million people in the UK are known to have experienced long Covid and a review of risk factors found consistent evidence for an increased risk amongst women. Among symptomatic people, the persistence of one or more symptoms for 12 weeks or longer was higher in women than men. While acute cases of Covid tend to be mostly male and over 50, long Covid sufferers are both relatively young and overwhelmingly women.

Women’s increased likelihood of having long Covid therefore creates challenges for women’s labour market participation, particularly as employer responses to long Covid have made sustaining paid work particularly difficult. A recent TUC survey found that:

• Over half (52%) of respondents said they had experienced some form of discrimination or disadvantage due to long Covid.
• One in six respondents (18%) said the amount of sick leave they had taken had triggered absence management or HR processes. This could be particularly difficult for women, as evidence showed women have been forced into using their sick leave entitlement to undertake additional unpaid care during the pandemic, especially during school and nursery closures.
• Overall, one in 20 respondents said they had been forced out of their jobs because they had long Covid.

As women are more likely to experience long Covid, inadequate employer responses are threatening women’s labour market participation and financial security. It’s therefore critical that women who have had to leave their job, or reduce their working hours, are able to access financial support.

The rate of Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) remains insufficient at £96.35 per week, and has put women with long Covid, and their children, at increased risk of poverty. SSP is only payable for up to 28 weeks, and many women with long Covid are now reaching the end of entitlement, making them reliant on a social security system that doesn’t meet their needs.

Other women will have missed out on SSP entirely. Despite women being more likely to be in jobs with high-exposure to Covid-19, women’s concentration in low-paid and precarious work makes them less likely to be eligible for SSP. Work from the Women’s Budget Group found that women hold 70% of jobs that are not entitled to SSP.

There is therefore a need for strong employer and Government responses to protect the financial security of women experiencing long Covid symptoms.

The TUC have called for the UK Government to urgently recognise long Covid as a disability under the Equality Act, highlighting that many individuals experiencing long Covid already meet the 12-month criteria for a ‘long-term’ condition. This would ensure that employers cannot legally discriminate against workers with long Covid while also putting a duty on employers to make reasonable adjustments that remove, reduce or prevent any disadvantages workers with long Covid face. Of course, this should be accompanied by financial support for workers who have not yet met the 12-month threshold.

There have also been calls for long Covid to be recognised as an occupational disease to give employees and their dependants access to protection and compensation if they contracted the virus while working. This is particularly important for women who make up vast majority (79%) of key workers in Scotland, meaning they have greater exposure to the virus in the workplace. Figures from the HSE covering the period of April to September 2020 found that three-quarters of employer Covid-19 disease reports made in Scotland related to a female employee.

Earlier this year, Close the Gap responded to the consultation on Mark Griffin’s proposed Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill. We highlighted that the current system of Employment Injuries Assistance and Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit (IIDB) does not meet women’s needs and is ultimately unfit for purpose. Women workers face significant challenges in receiving support through the current system and these issues are likely to come to the fore in the context of long Covid.

This proposed Bill is therefore an important, and timely, intervention. The Bill can have a positive impact on equality through a focus on commissioning research relating to women’s experiences of industrial injury; the development of new mechanisms and definitions which improve women’s access to EIA; and changes to the list of prescribed illness and diseases. At present, only 16% of those claiming IIDB are women.

Historically, less attention has been given to the health and safety needs of women. The pandemic has also highlighted issues with women’s access to suitable Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). Only 29% of women report that the PPE they use is specifically designed for women, meaning that it is not fit for purpose. Inappropriate PPE leaves women further exposed to Covid-19, posing a severe risk to the safety of women workers and their families. Female-dominated sectors such as care have also suffered from a lack of PPE during the pandemic.

Women’s experiences of long Covid and the barriers to accessing adequate support have, once again, highlighted the persistence of structural issues around women’s low-paid and precarious work; the inability of the social security system to meet women’s needs; and the need for urgent reform of our employment injuries assistance system.

Employers need to effectively support women workers with long Covid, and the UK Government must urgently introduce measures to ensure women have access to adequate financial support. Without such action, long Covid will further entrench women’s inequality in the labour market.

Challenge Poverty Week: The next Child Poverty Delivery Plan must prioritise action on women’s labour market equality

Across Scotland an increasing number of women, and their children, are locked in the grip of poverty. We know that women are more likely to be in poverty than men; are more likely to experience in-work poverty; and are more likely to experience persistent poverty than men. The pandemic has exacerbated these trends, with women who were already struggling now under enormous financial pressure.

The impact of the pandemic on women’s employment and incomes has implications for child poverty because of the inextricable links between women’s poverty and child poverty. Women’s incomes remain a critical factor in child poverty with evidence showing that where women’s disposable income is reduced, spending on children decreases.

However, poverty is not inevitable and Challenge Poverty Week highlights that with strong action across a number of policy areas, we can tackle poverty in Scotland. As women’s experience of poverty is directly tied to their experience of the labour market, a key area when urgent action is required is employment.

Women account for 60% of workers earning less than the real Living Wage in Scotland. Work that is seen as “women’s work”, such as cleaning, care and retail, is systematically undervalued in the labour market because this work is done by women. This results in the low pay associated with those jobs and sectors and has lifelong impacts for women including having higher levels of debt, less savings and fewer assets.

Women are more likely than men to have caring responsibilities and therefore face the additional pressure of finding work that allows them to balance earning with caring. This sees women further concentrated into low paid and insecure work, as most part-time work is found in the lowest paid jobs and sectors, often leading to women working below their skill level. Research from Living Wage Scotland found that women in part-time work stand to benefit the most from Living Wage accreditation.

In Scotland, only 24% of jobs were advertised with flexible options by the end of 2020. The pandemic has also highlighted a clear disparity in access to flexibility, with low-paid and lower-skilled workers less likely to have access to homeworking. The lack of flexibility in full-time employment across the labour market, but particularly in low-paid full-time work, is a barrier to women increasing both their hours and earnings. There are particular challenges for mothers of school-age children, especially single mothers, in covering school holidays while in full-time work.

Women with caring responsibilities, and single parents particularly, 91% of whom are women, are therefore trapped in poverty by a range of employment-related factors including generic employability programmes; the prohibitive cost of childcare; lack of quality flexible working and part-time work, with reliable hours; and difficulties in accessing training and development opportunities. The Scottish Government should prioritise addressing these barriers within anti-poverty policymaking.

A key driver of the Scottish Government’s action on poverty is the Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan. Within this Plan, work and earnings is designated a priority area for action. The Plan explicitly recognises that poverty is gendered and highlights the need to advance women’s labour market equality. Actions include engaging with sectors, such as tourism and hospitality, in which women’s low pay is a concern; addressing the gender pay gap; and enabling more flexible working opportunities.

The next Child Poverty Delivery Plan is due to be published in March 2022. Close the Gap are clear that the focus on women’s labour market inequality must be maintained, and further developed, within this Plan. The Scottish Government should ensure that the new Delivery Plan is ambitious, gender competent and reflective of the current context.

Last week, Close the Gap responded to the Scottish Government’s call for evidence on the Child Poverty Delivery Plan. In our response, we call for a range of actions on women’s labour market inequality including tackling the undervaluation of ”women’s work” in sectors such as childcare and social care; the introduction of a gender-sensitive minimum income guarantee; further increases in the funded childcare entitlement; and ensuring greater access to gender-competent employability and skills support.

An overarching ask relates to the process of policymaking. Gender mainstreaming is a strategy to proactively embed gender analysis in all policy and legislative development. But despite being a requirement of the public sector equality duty, gender mainstreaming is not yet visible within Scottish Government policy development. Some of the current Plan’s actions, particularly in the realm of upskilling and reskilling, have not been gendered by design. These actions are thus unlikely to tackle the causes of women’s poverty.

We also called for improvements in the range of gender-sensitive sex-disaggregated data gathered in the evaluation of the Child Poverty Delivery Plan. While the current Plan, and the accompanying Equality Impact Assessment, commit to making progress in addressing gendered data gaps on poverty in Scotland, there does not appear to have been significant progress in this area.

Children’s access to resources, safety and wellbeing cannot be divorced from the circumstances of their mothers. Achieving Scotland’s child poverty targets requires urgent and concentrated action to eradicate poverty and inequality experienced by women. While the Child Poverty Delivery Plan 2018-2022 recognises this explicitly, the actions on women’s labour market inequality have not been sufficiently prioritised. Ultimately, unless the Child Poverty Delivery Plan 2022-2026 prioritises action to advance women’s equality and secure women’s incomes, Scotland will fail to meet child poverty targets.

You can read Close the Gap’s full response to the consultation on the Child Poverty Delivery Plan here.

What will the end of furlough mean for women’s employment?

Despite the latest data showing that one-quarter of employers across the UK were still using the scheme, the UK Government’s Job Retention Scheme is scheduled to finish at the end of September.

Furlough has been a welcome, if imperfect, intervention by the UK Government. The scheme has supressed unemployment, with cumulative data showing that over 910,000 jobs in Scotland have been furloughed over the course of the pandemic. Given women’s concentration in service sectors such as retail and hospitality, the scheme has enabled women who work in these sectors to protect some of their income during prolonged periods of sector shutdowns.

The decision to end the scheme in September has been viewed by some as an arbitrary decision, not tied to any particular milestone in the pandemic or the state of the economy. Indeed, the trajectory of the pandemic still remains somewhat unclear. In Scotland, positive cases and hospitalisations have been on the rise again and it is likely that there may be further surges in the winter months. In the absence of furlough to protect jobs during any future lockdowns or sector shutdowns, there are concerns about unemployment in the coming months.

Data on the Job Retention Scheme shows that 116,500 employees remain on furlough in Scotland. While women accounted for majority of those on furlough in Scotland from July 2020 to April 2021, the latest data shows that women account for 49% of those still on furlough. Previous analysis by Close the Gap found that younger women were more likely to be furloughed than their male counterparts. This remains true, with women making up 55% of furloughed staff among those aged under 18. However, the highest take-up rates of furlough now reside among the over 65 age group, with 8% take-up among women in this age group and 9% among men.

Declining rates of furlough among women is primarily driven by decreases in the number of jobs on furlough in sectors such as accommodation and food services. However, while furlough rates are declining in these sectors, over one-third (35%) of furloughed jobs in Scotland reside in female-dominated retail and hospitality. This creates a potentially negative outlook for women’s employment in these sectors.

The Scottish Government’s Programme for Government, published earlier this month, notes that the full impact of COVID-19 on employment will only become clear with the end of the Job Retention Scheme. Certainly, a number of factors makes it difficult to determine the impact the end of furlough will have on unemployment in Scotland:

• While declining rates of furlough over recent months could imply that employment will remain relatively stable at the end of the scheme, occupations and sectors with continued elevated rates of furlough, such as air travel assistants (65.4% female), travel agency (93.3% female), and arts and entertainment (60% female), continue to face suppressed demand and tighter restrictions. Women’s dominance in these sectors would appear to put their employment at greater risk, because it cannot be assumed that furlough rates in these sectors will decline in the coming weeks
• Furlough rates in male-dominated sectors such as manufacturing no longer appear to be linked to the level of public health restrictions. Evidence points to employers in these male-dominated sectors continuing to furlough staff to counter the impact of Brexit and international trade issues, as opposed to the impact of the pandemic. Wider economic factors may therefore be inflating the male furlough rate, creating complexities in predicting the impact of the pandemic on women’s employment when furlough comes to an end.
• Those who lose their current job at the end of furlough will not necessarily become unemployed, with labour market analysts pointing to declining unemployment rates since the start of 2021 and rising vacancy rates as a cause for optimism. However, women who have been made redundant will face gendered barriers to re-entering employment, including a lack of flexible working, occupational segregation and discriminatory recruitment practice.

Due to the lag in labour market data, the impact of the end of the scheme won’t be visible in labour market data until December. For now, what’s certain is a lack of certainty around the impacts the end of furlough will have on unemployment in Scotland.

The Scottish Government expects disproportionately negative employment outcomes for women, as well as young people, Black and minority ethnic (BME) people, lone parents and disabled people. This is particularly significant, as these groups already face structural barriers to employment and, as a result of their intersecting identities, BME women and disabled women will face particular barriers to good quality employment. Consequently, Scottish Government have concluded that activity to drive up good, secure and well-paid employment opportunities for those at greatest risk of poverty will have to be prioritised in the aftermath of the pandemic. To date, however, this rhetoric has not yet translated to effective action on women’s in-work poverty and job insecurity in Scotland.

This focus on job quality, as well as job numbers, is extremely welcome as women’s employment is increasingly precarious, and concentrated in low-paid work.

Research from the IFS found that the aforementioned surge in job vacancies has been driven entirely by low-paying occupations, in which new job openings are around 20% higher than pre-pandemic. As the IFS also concluded that competition for new job opportunities is higher for women than it is for men, a focus on good quality employment will be critical in preventing women being funnelled into low-paid employment.

Unemployment rates will undoubtedly be an important indicator of economic recovery. However, if we are to meet the ambition of building a fairer economy in the aftermath of the pandemic, we need to move beyond a narrow focus on employment rates alone and ensure that fair work for women is core to economic recovery. Following the 2008 financial crisis, employment rates masked a rise in low paid work, slow wage growth, as well as increasing precarity and job insecurity in the labour market. This also reduced Scotland’s gender pay gap, not because there was an increase in women’s pay, but rather there was a downward pressure on men’s pay.

Many of the sectors which account for a large proportion of female job losses over the crisis are notoriously low paid and characterised by job insecurity. For example, four in ten of those working in female-dominated retail and wholesale are paid less than the real Living Wage. In hospitality, also a majority female workforce, 80% of workers reported that they were already struggling with their finances before going into lockdown. A return to the status quo will merely cement women’s labour market inequality and in-work poverty.

While furlough has gone some way to protect employment and earnings for some women, key features of the Job Retention Scheme actually increased the likelihood of women leaving work in order to care, particularly at the start of the crisis. As a result of the failure to embed gender analysis in policymaking, the House of Commons’ Women and Equalities Committee concluded that the design of furlough “overlooked - and in some respects continues to overlook - the specific and well-understood labour market and caring inequalities faced by women.”

As furlough comes to an end and the impacts of the pandemic on employment become clear, we cannot afford for women’s labour market equality to continue to be an afterthought in policymaking. It’s time to put gender equality at the heart of fair work and to prioritise policies and interventions which tackle occupational segregation, women’s low pay and the continued undervaluation of women’s work.

Scottish Government’s forthcoming National Strategy on Economic Transformation is an opportunity to prioritise action on the structural issues which underpin women’s economic inequality. Close the Gap has advocated that a fairer and greener economy has to be an economy that also works for women.

What’s Violence Against Women got to do with women’s labour market inequality? Close the Gap’s new animation explains.

Close the Gap has developed a short animation for Equally Safe at Work that explains the link between violence against women (VAW) and women’s labour market inequality. Tackling women’s inequality in the workplace is a necessary step in preventing VAW, so employers therefore have a key role to play.

Having an understanding of the causal story is a critical component of Equally Safe at Work. Employers need to understand the problem, and their role in designing and delivering solutions, if they are to develop gender-sensitive employment practice.

The evaluation of the pilot of Equally Safe at Work identified that there is a need for capacity building among employers and staff on the link between VAW, gender inequality, and women’s labour market inequality. This animation conveys a complex problem in a simple and accessible way. It will be used as a learning resource for employers engaged with Equally Safe at Work to build knowledge and awareness around VAW and women’s employment.

For more information on Equally Safe at Work, you can visit: https://www.equallysafeatwork.scot/workplace-gender-equality/