Improve women's health, gender equality to spur Africa's growth

When local and international nurses staged a football tournament to raise awareness and fight against the ‘Childbirth Deaths’ for support of the United Nations’ 17 Global Goals dubbed ‘Global Goals World Cup (GGWCup)’. [File, Standard]

The Covid-19 pandemic has rolled back the gains women have made over the past decades and made it clear that the impact of crises is never gender-neutral. It is no secret that women, by virtue of being over-represented in the services sector, lower paying jobs and the informal economy, have suffered greater economic losses than men.

In 2020, it was estimated that globally women lost more than 64 million jobs at a cost of US$ 800 billion in lost earnings for those working in the formal sector. This monumental figure does not take into account the millions of women working in the informal sector, which employs majority of women in lower-and middle-income countries. In sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, an estimated 74 per cent of women in non-agricultural jobs are in informal employment, including domestic workers, street vendors and petty goods traders.