As the world learns to live with COVID-19, to emerge from the current crisis, and to “build back better”, UN Women’s new “Feminist plan” provides a visionary but practical roadmap for putting gender equality, social justice, and sustainability at the centre of the recovery and transformation.
COVID-19 has revealed and worsened inequalities and is a reminder of just how unsustainable and fragile the world’s economies and democracies are. The crisis also provides a warning about what is rapidly coming down the track on climate change and environmental degradation. This has created both a need and an opening to rethink economic and social policies and re-evaluate what needs to be prioritized.
The “Feminist plan” maps the ambitious and transformative policies—on livelihoods, care, and the environment—that are needed to build a more equal and sustainable future. To get there, it calls for context-specific policy pathways, tailored political strategies, and financing. The plan identifies key levers that can create change and the actors at global, national, and local levels that need to take action to move towards this vision.
View online/download
- Publication (PDF, 902KB)
- Key messages (forthcoming)
Data – Lessons from COVID-19:
- Women’s livelihoods have taken a hit (PDF, 48KB)
- The care economy in crisis mode (PDF, 53KB)
- Major systemic crises are gendered, and the environment is next (PDF, 48KB)
- Progressive and feminist politics are in lockdown (PDF, 47KB)
Recommendations – Key levers to:
- Transform women’s livelihoods in COVID-19 recovery (PDF, 43KB)
- Enable a care-led recovery (PDF, 47KB)
- Catalyse a green and gender equitable recovery (PDF, 48KB)
- Promote feminist politics for transformative recovery (PDF, 43KB)
Background research
Compiling the “Feminist plan” has been year-long process, in which more than 100 experts from the United Nations, civil society, and research institutes were convened to discuss the key challenges posed by the pandemic to gender equality, and concrete proposals on how to overcome them. As well as the final plan, this process has produced a series of other resources for policy makers and activists.
“Feminist ideas for a post-COVID world” think pieces:
- Shahra Razavi: The social protection response to COVID-19 has failed women: Towards universal gender-responsive social protection systems (PDF, 137KB)
- Mignon Duffy: How can the COVID-19 crisis be harnessed to improve the rights and working conditions of paid care workers? (PDF, 130KB)
- Jennifer Piscopo: Pathways to building back better: Advancing feminist policies in COVID-19 response and recovery (PDF, 163KB)
- Juliana Franzoni and Veena Siddharth: Care after COVID-19: Time for a U-turn? (PDF, 147KB)
- Ilene Grabl: Enabling a permissive multilateralisms approach to global macroeconomic governance to support feminist plans for sustainability and social justice (PDF, 176KB)
Articles:
- Laura Turquet: Gender equality, sustainability and social justice: A roadmap for recovery
- James Heintz, Silke Staab and Laura Turquet: Don’t let another crisis go to waste: The COVID-19 pandemic and the imperative for a paradigm shift
- Papa Seck, Jessa Encarnacion, Cecilia Tinonin and Sara Duerto-Valero: Gendered impacts of COVID-19 in Asia and the Pacific: Early evidence on deepening socioeconomic inequalities in paid and unpaid work.
Expert group meeting reports:
- Is this time different? COVID-19, inequalities, and the prospects for structural transformation (PDF, 137KB)
- Macroeconomic policies for the feminist plan on sustainability and social justice (PDF, 254KB)
- Putting care for people at the centre of a sustainable and just economy (PDF, 328KB)
Bibliographic information
Subject area(s): COVID-19; Gender equality and women’s empowerment; Health
Resource type: Best practices; Policy papers
UN Women office involved in publication: UN Women Headquarters
Publication year: 2021
Publishing entities: United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women)
Source:unwomen.org
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