Transcripts For CSPAN3 Discussion On COVID-19 Economic Impact On Women 20240712

Economic programs will be hosting around covid19 Economic Impact on women. Covid19 is a crisis like no other and it has had a catastrophic effect on womens economic wellbein. Of course as we all know, women were already at an economic disadvantage before this crisis. In every corner of the world women have been at a disadvantage in terms of education, career options, wage rates, Financial Inclusion and access to technology. The burden of unpaid work and family care also contribute to widening gender inequality. At the same time, women have been at the front line of fighting covid19. From essential workers to childcare. And now is of the impact on the service and retail industries, women are bearing the brunt of economic cost. We at the Atlantic Council are committed to understanding what is happening both here and within the United States and around the world and striving to chart a better way forward out of the crisis. Im excited about our Global Business and economic program, working to develop an Inclusive Growth Initiative as a key part of their work. Because you can only be strong abroad if you are strong at home. We have a group of Experts Joining us today who will unpack these challenges and offer promising policies and practices. Guiding this important conversation is a leading ally and true champion on gender equality in all facets. Ross kumar. He also just happens to be the founding president and editorinchief of a social enterprise and media platform for the Global Development community with over 100 team Members Around the world. His recent book the business of changing the world was published last year and named the World Economic forums bookofthemonth and reviewed and reported on by bloomberg businessweek, pds and pr and boss. Not to mention ross is in demand as a speaker for a variety of corporate and philanthropic audiences. Ross is a thought leader and avid number of global dialogue. One thing that intrigues me about him is his commitment. Since his childhood in fact, for making the world a better place and his bio states that he and his team members get up every day committed to ensuring mobile efforts to do more good to promote people. Thank you for your leadership and commitment to gender equality. Suffice to say we are all in truly capable hands and thrilled he could join us today. So take it away. A very kind introduction and hopefully resume does not show me blushing as i am on the inside. Hello everyone. Wherever your joining us from all over the world, this is an important topic and im so glad the Atlantic Council is working on and im honored to be part of this event today. Of course the crisis its hard to believe its still a crisis going on for so long. We wake up many of us still in our homes and its a reminder of how longstanding this is and how deep the impacts are and we all know this inequality has existed before covid are just being amplified. They are being exposed in deeper ways now so conversations like this are so important that we get together with real experts on and we hear from them directly and thats what this session is about area we got a fantastic group of experts, without ambassador kelly curry was here with the ambassador at large for global womens issues at the state department. A long career in the foreignpolicy space working on human rights and working on issues of gender equality so really hear her take on all of us today. Henry cole who those of you know well and often appears in our pages and our events, shes had of gender. Again, very eager to hear her multilateral perspective and Nicole Goldman who is a fellow at the Atlantic Council and is widely known as a real expert on these issues. So here to get that use into this discussion too. Welcome to the three of you. Thank you for doing this as well and a big thank you to all of you joining us around the world, feel free to throw in questions. Theres a check, you can put questions right here into the chat window. Theres also twitter, throw your questions on twitter and the folks at the Atlantic Council are sharing them, we will try to use them into the discussion and give you time for your what is a big topic that i think gina laid out very well at the outset, to begin i can turn to you ambassador curry just to say give us the big picture perspective here. Where months into this crisis in many parts of the world is getting worse including here. Theres a lot of challenge in our own country but a lot of countries have lower resources. What is a broad picture when it comes to the Economic Impact on women due to this pandemic . Your not here yet so you might need to unmute. There we go. Is that better . First i want to thank everyone for whos made this event today possible. Thank you for letting me be with you, its a pleasure to be with such an accomplished group to have and moderating this great discussion and just participating with my friend nicole and colleague henriette about this issue very much taken over our whole lives in so many ways from support to personalize. When i came into office i started this job in january and i had only been on the job are about 2 and a half months when we started realizing things, that this was an issue we needed to start dealing with but at the beginning it was far away and not really think that we were having to grapple with it certainly was obviously. And as we look at what we were doing and in our office in particular which is responsible obviously for the us Foreign Policy and importations of womens issues and how we incorporate concern about womens empowerment into our foreign and National Security policy, its been really amazing to have the kinds of tools that i had coming into my office that allowed us to be flexible and nimble and respond to this challenge. And specifically i have been, when i was nominated for this position, it was very clear based on the work that had been done previous to my confirmation that the white house really was very much focused on the womens agenda. As well as the womens Economic Empowerment agenda and weve been taking bold action to unleash greater opportunities for women to fully and freely participate in the economy here in the United States as well as overseas and its been a hallmark of the administration. So weve been doing that by standing efforts in the federal government in the private sector and working with our partners overseas in particular. So we feel like our policies in the United States have obviously set us up where women were enabled in the economy. And able to participate in record numbers prior to the pandemic. And where we were at a point where women comprised of 47 percent of the workforce in the United States and were getting over 70 percent of all new jobs that were created in 2019 so we were coming into this crisis at a very high point from our own policy posture. And we had a 66 year low in female unemployment all these great indicators. This pandemic hits and with it this crisis with our economy. Which had to be shut down. So we really tried to think creatively, across this administration, you know we believe no americans in all workers should benefit from from any benefits that we have. And for employers to be able to provide the adequate protections and relief at all levels of society it is important women are often the primary caregivers, as we all know. Here in the United States we focus on how we are going to minimize the delay between what skills workers currently have in order to see in the economy and what skills they will need to see it in the future. We have to shorten that timeline up and focus on getting new skills out for women and girls, both skilled building those efforts. And building those efforts. This is something we did for the crisis and even more crucial that we do it today. We have been pivoted towards responding to the Global Crisis and local economic collapse and in particular we really have found a womans Global Development and Prosperity Initiative to be a wonderful tool and i was always fortunate i cant take credit for anything about how it was set up because it predated my arrival but it has been a questionable platform for us to attack this problem and at the beginning a little concerned because i felt that women were being characterized on this as victims who were passive actors sitting and waiting for someone to come and save them and that certainly is not how we feel about trying to empower women in the workforce or through our Women Security efforts. We are very much focused on womens as agent and change drivers, of change in our immediate thought in march was how do we push out this message that women are going to beat the drivers of the recovery and women are critical to this response and they are active agents and doing all that they need from their front lines to the home across the spectrum and when we start to move into the recovery phase you got to get women in your economy you got to get them off the sidelines or you will not recover effectively. That has been a major focus of our Foreign Policy efforts as we have moved out with implement gdp in this crisis and age. I will stop there because i feel like that is a lot. But you threw a lot of interesting things at the table that i want to come back to. You talked about how women do play a unique role in the pandemic asked affects everyone but as you said, yes, but not equally and women do represent Frontline Healthcare workers at a higher percentage in much of the world and the beauty of care and domestic care, caregiving, unpaid work basically has substantially increased and you talk about the jobs picture and it is true that when we were at the historical high, a lot of those jobs were industry hit hard so lets unpack all of that and come back around. You are at the ic so youre looking at the private sector lends and Public Policy so what is your take on that same question and how you see the Economic Impacts for women of evolving in this pandemic . Thank you. Thank you for getting us together, not just to talk about the challenges but the solutions we can use. To give you a bit of context we are currently looking at potentially up to 100 million being pushed into poverty and its a huge reversal from where we have come to and just to remind everyone [inaudible] we also see 1. 1 Million Students going into daycare. That leads to around 0. 6 months and lost schooling and potentially even longer. Last but not least, from the private sector standpoint around 500 billion have already left the emergingmarket so that is the quick picture. What does that mean for women in the International Finance corporation is investing in companies and what we have found is quite staggering that echoes the headlines that you just mentioned. One of the items around employment. If i dial it back before the crisis the emerging markets were already losing up to 48 trillion in terms of lifetime earnings between men and women so that was gigantic but now you have a large trough of women in the workforce and their counterparts so you can see how that is expanding and how its lost on the microlevel. Just to underline that because you give so much data at your disposal of the world bank but we are seeing that women are losing their jobs in higher numbers and seen they are not entering back in the workforce and i just want to make sure that is something we are seeing in the data already. We see that in the data both in developing and developing markets. [inaudible] what we are seeing is the reason for dropouts are buried. One is because women are concentrated often times in those that are most impacted and women are also often times in informal, income jobs in the Service Industry and they are being diminished. This has exacerbated some of the challenges. As almost a paralytic pandemic is the care crises, and i think hopefully it will be a huge wakeup call around the world to say enough is enough and care needs to be tackled as an infrastructure and cannot be pushed over to large parts of women which will be forced to choose between paid and unpaid work and again we have seen data points that come from our clients and women are leaving in larger droves because they cannot juggle the two anymore. Some of the data coming out of phoenix, the woman entrepreneurship finance stimulates the research and one is looking at how Women Entrepreneurs in the emerging markets are impacted in their counterparts. In uganda what weve seen is 61 of women of enterprise have loss of income compared to 22 of men counterparts. If you look at the global level facebook has done research around the impacted crisis has had on women of entrepreneurs and male entrepreneurs and Women Entrepreneurs are up to 6 percent more likely. If you look at u. S. Research all the women and minorities are much more proportionally impacted. But is that due to lack of access for capital . Is at the main reason why you see women having to close their businesses . They dont have other sources to support them through this time . It is just not capital but capital is one reason so working capital, particularly its a binding constraint for Women Entrepreneurs but weve also seen oftentimes women are already not as productive in their entrepreneurial compared to men. Its often concentrated in the hardest hit so we have seen a multitude of reasons as to why women ultra doers are harder hit but the other part is that again they care components limit how much women can actually focus on their productive activities compared to their unpaid or unproductive activities at the household level. Last but not least, one thing we all look to is the cure as a means of engagement around payment, financial platforms, labor platforms, commerce, ecommerce platforms but women are 17 less likely to [inaudible] so we need to work with our client responding and breaking that Digital Divide the combines the challenge that last but not least, i would like to point out one more thing that oftentimes talked about and holds for every sector is that decisionmaking is most geared to male. Decisionmaking, for it to be effective we need to hear from children and women and minorities in order to design a Crisis Response that meets the challenges and demands for the most underserved communities and i agree when they say we dont want to claim victim on minorities or other groups as victims but we want to make sure that we are seeing them as economic change agents and not in the next round of questions i could share some of the incredible Extraordinary Solutions that women have come up with themselves and tackling some of the demands. That would be great. To that point about male leadership, if you look at the Global Health spaces as an example it is still the leadership roles are largely dominated by men and yet most of the actual people providing services in Global Health are women. 70 are women. Yet, if you dont have the perspective one of the challenges for Community Health care worker who is trying to both care for her own family and get added care for the community she is responsible for. Ultimately Health Assistants are only strong as our frontline workers and i hear many in the community is not sufficiently supporting. If i may, you mentioned the point on Healthcare Systems and one thing weve seen is that violence has increased up to 20 and what is so important is that we build in our response a systematic approach as opposed to a oneoff shortterm hotlines are important but how can the Health Sector as a whole address violence or the Education Sector but you need to get much more systematic in our response to genderbased violence which i do want to round out on because this is something that stops women in particular are. From being productive and fully present and work and being able to deal with things and the increased stress and lack of mobility. Great point. Im glad you put that out there but maybe we can come back to Health Care System which could fit in that solution bucket, if we can think big about possibly using this crisis as an argument for a major investment in Global Public Health Care Systems. Let me get to you, nicole. You can comment on all of this and there are so many interesting issues that the ambassador puts on the table. You planned this so well. Let me turn it over to you and i love to get your thoughts spirit great, thanks so much. Thanks to everyone for joining us today. Its a really important conversation that i am thrilled to be a part of myself and to be with all of you. You are right. There is a lot of directions and comments that been made that i can touch on but let me pick up on that. In addition to the gender inequality that we see in the impact of covid there is this interracial intergenerational as well and one of the opening comments that gina made that you commented on as well is the situation before the pandemic headed for young women and young people around the world here in the u. S. And abroad was that race. Right . You son of women has been a lingering challenge all around the world and in various extents extents, since 2008 and even before that what we saw with the way the Global Financial collapse in 2008 is proportionally affected young people then is we are seeing that now. With covid, in particular, there is almost a triple shock if you will to young women. Before the pandemic hit roughly one third of young women around the world were not in education, employment or training and nearly 40 of those were in upwards of 40 and in lower to middle income countries. Just a quick close, i had a paper that came out last week with the atlantic middle east program that looked at the opportunities for a Demographic Dividend in italy south africa among and one of the particular issues that we talked about is the very low economic participation of young women, only 16 of young arab women were active. This is before the pandemic hits. Whats surfacing or exacerbating is a lot of challenges that were already there. As far as why young women are being disproportionally hit within women themselves as a larger group . Some of the things that have been spoken to are again, been acute for young women. If you look at the kinds of work where young women are working they are often engaged in the Informal Sector as well and or they are in the sectors that tend to be either parttime or not necessarily in secure work but contractor seasonal or cyclical in the lower scale or entrylevel that they are more likely to be last one on, first one off. So to speak. In fact in a recent survey done by the ilo of youth that remained employed after the covid hit has seen their hours cut by about 25 on average. Again, even where they are continuing to work they are seeing an average cut and seen these shifts. Again, similar thing with the industry. Healthcare, hospitality, Service Sector so these are areas where there is a drop in Consumer Spending as a result of economic shutdown and young people not only lose their jobs but where they do have Small Businesses and where they are young entrepreneurs they are likely facing trouble and already adding on to what is a Capital Access constraint and so on and so forth. I think the other piece that is really important to talk about when we talk about the disproportionate impact on young women in particular is the impact on education and training. And how that is having longerterm effects and will affect their potential as well as where they are now good as we no, and people are very dynamic and many are both in school and working at the same time trying to scale up for a better job or different job that may not be available. As a result of this crisis not only is there a Health Crisis and an economic crisis but related to the education crisis, nearly over 90 of schools, if not more, schools and Training Centers have been closed across 192 countries. In that same survey of young people and another survey at least 90 are almost 95, 98 recorded that they saw their education or training disrupted by the covid crisis. When you think about young women and even getting into the impact on girls on down the road, a generational impact, this is a really critical point we need to keep in mind in the way this is affecting in the really broad reach in terms of this crisis. When you think about the future and how these inequalities have been with us a long time is the young generation this is the chance. Young women getting into universities and trained and into the workforce, starting businesses, that is a big opportunity and if we lose this moment we lose two years of that the effects will be longterm. Absolutely. We are still a scene even effects of how this began from 2008 and the impact of that and how it delayed entry into the workforce and we know young people already had a longer time getting into the workforce and getting that first job for many of them and this will only make that worse. There is some interesting and still data coming in on studies, and showing how if you look at the impact of School Closures from the evil crisis where sierra leone schools were closed for upward of nine months, that was five, six years ago and many of those young women and young people are still feeling that impact. They havent necessarily been able to catch up. I think that is really important and something we need to keep in mind and is critical. One of the other pieces i wanted to touch on that henrietta mentioned in terms of the Digital Infrastructure and Digital Access because again that is really critical as we are seeing, not only the move toward remote work and young women and the importance of potentially remote work for young women but also for remote learning. As schools are closing there has been an enhancement and move toward Online Learning but we also know young women dont necessarily have the access to the information and internet infrastructure, if you will, and they dont necessarily have the digital scales. Its a compounding issue that again is limiting these opportunity in the immediate to shift towards a more, digital landscape in terms of learning and work but also affecting what might be, not only the new normal for now, but the perspective opportunities in the future. Its creating this compounding, you know, effect on this intergenerational impact on top of what we know is the gender burden. That is something to keep in mind. A point we also made was about the data and, i think, one of the challenges we have is where we often are collecting data that is more success aggregated and we are not necessarily doing that enough. We dont necessarily have enough gender data but on top of that again is that age disaggregation. We also dont know what we dont know. It can be hard to identify where those gaps are if we dont have that data that really will help us tell that story and understand where those gaps are so we can work to fill them. If anyone would want to take a deep dive into this it is a issue we have a site up on this google gender data. If you want to be nerdy there is a lot there. Its an important topic. Ambassador curry, there is so much on the table you could comment on but in addition, could you bring us by the curtain. You have been in this role since december 2019 and probably most every time there has been dominated by this pandemic, now so far and likely the rest of your time will be dominated by this pandemic. What are the conversations like with your counterparts in other foreign governments . Is there a theme here or any Economic Impact on women or is it just us in this conversation, is this getting the priority that you think it deserves . It is absolutely on the minds of my counterparts and on the minds of other countries that we work with. Developed countries we are trying to partner with through the g7, through the g20, two other economic multilateral engagements that we are having good we are very much focused on this. As well as our developing partners. One of the great things about again and i feel like im very lucky because i did come in with this incredible set, with the gdp initiative which was focused on three key areas that are of absolute, critical, importance as we try to come back from this economic crisis. Workforce training, Skill Development which women will need to respond to the changes in the economy and addressing their lack of access to capital and making womensmore durable, more sustainable and more capable of really earning the living wage that they need to be able to preserve their families and address the overall enabling environment which there continue to be laws, regulations and policies and cultural norms in place that keep women on the sidelines, keep them out of the economy and keep them from fully participating. The plan this year was to really focus on that enabling environments and looking at the legal barriers that we would see focused on countries to get to remove those legal barriers to women in meaningful participation across the economy. So what we had done before covid was the White House Council of economic advisors crated this index to determine what would be the benefit if every country still had restrictions in fundamental areas of law if they were to remove those restrictions and they found that this would generate 7 trillion in additional gdp just in these five areas. The reason these five areas were chosen we think this is important now because as much as would be nice to put a whole lot of Additional Resources into the system countries will be struggling. We will see the amount in the loan packages coming from the World Bank Group and the level of assistance in the loan forgiveness efforts going on and almost every country around the world but especially developing countries have seen the bottom fall out of their fiscal situation. Asking them to then make big huge commitments in a situation when they cant pay their payroll of government workers is not feasible or practical. We are focused on five areas that require no expenditure of public funds but really do require political will and it is things like making sure women have equal access to inherit and own property. We saw in a bowl is also very important that where there were these disparities women whose husband who spouses died lost everything, they lost the home where they are, and their children lived in their subsistence farms and the relatives and their property away and had nothing. Making sure the countries are adjusting things like that. Access to institutions and again been able to get ids and things like that you really need to be able to have a business function at the court. Building credit and being able to access credit equally and being able to work in any sector of the economy that you choose because as we talk about women being pushed into these pink caller ghettos as we call them here in the United States the developing world is often very low margin, very difficult and the first industry to be affected so given them the opportunity to compete in industries that have higher wages, more Economic Security is important and ability to travel freely around the country. If countries around the world have restrictions in those five very fundamental areas were to remove them we could, we had done the research and know we would be far better off. Post covid crisis is more important than ever that countries do anything they can to remove these barriers and not put any speed bumps or any barriers in the way of trying to come back from this. We are in currently focused on how we help our partners with these very practical and i they seem like small things but because of the amount of political will that is required we are dedicating to diplomatic programmatic interventions and dedicating intervention with our diplomacy around the stew and we are deeply focused on trying to help partners they want to make these changes and take these steps but dont necessarily have the wherewithal on their own. We are trying to help them get there. Thanks, and i do want to come back later to the conversation and is there something bigger that we can do that most of these countries dont have the space for, and what are we doing to consider the depth of this crisis to support the whole world, not just our own economy. Lets come back right weve got questions starting to come in and i want to mind everyone that we have the q a window and we put it in on twitter and we did have a question command that i want to rip on a little bit who is asking about female dominated through gender fields and shes talking about essential Industries Like teachers and nurses and if you think about this pandemic which is growing here in the United States, very fast, almost out of control it is growing in india and going in brazil and in many countries in the philippines and other places and who is on the front line taking the risk, the personal physical risk is women and we dont yet know about schools and it is a female dominated industry and a lot of women will be at physical risk and want how you feel about that. There is an economic component to it but to have any take on this and what will it mean for the labor force Going Forward . Im happy to jump in. The risks are differing between men and women and what can the private sector do to address those things, you might look that up and [inaudible] is online but what can Insurance Companies do to really build resilience that takes into account where women as policyholders come in because it was quite surprising that a lot of insurers were looking at and assume that men and women had the same risks and health and life and so on and what we have seen is they are not the same risk. Helping Insurance Companies out of the risk but also to work with the companies to create different products, services and Distribution Channels paid for example, you need to make sure you bridge the gap in order to do that successfully and bring women along but also if you look at your marketing and communications dont assume the male household earner is the one with the assets. Assume women have increased their exposure to Tertiary Education and have increased the participation originally in the labor force over the past decades and have respect that women are getting married later later one thing that we have seen, is the Distribution Channels, and they hate having that male dominated. That goes to the occupational selection, and you want to make sure you have diversity of channels there. We can speak to a variety of customers, including women that is something that is crucial, and i think and that we support, a lot of these mechanisms when it comes to finance. I think with the banking women program, that they have put together some great education, when it comes to trade finance, and when it comes to working capital solutions. To make sure its not just on the insurance front, but that women making sure theyre much better paid. Is that sufficient . Are we there . No absolutely not. We need a lot more partners to come in, and help us get some of these emerging variables, and constraints deal with the constraints. Well the Silver Lining through this crisis, is that maybe it gives us a chance, to take issues and actually bring them to fruition. People are paying attention now the way they did before, and they are seeing the urgency. But thank you for getting us going on solutions, and you dont on the ideas. Just to pick up on that, i will start with another opportunity, that we have seen, and yes women are at the forefront, 70 of the workforce more less, in terms of education and health care. But what we are seeing, is the opportunity, against your four young women, moving forward, is what the pandemic exposed. Its the need and the opportunity, in the health workforce, getting into the through line if you will, the Community Health workers, and expanding what the health workforce, and the care economy even looks like. These are kind of the jobs that are not going to be, automated is quickly right. In terms of going back to the bigger context, within the you know the covid covid hit. And the broad trends we are already seeing. This is an opportunity, as well as a challenge. And i want to make sure that the risks, are mitigated in terms of being sure they are provided the personal Protection Equipment and all of that. So talking about career opportunity, what has been exposed by the pandemic, is a broadening of the health care workforce. The opportunity for young women. So the education is changing, and thinking about it making sure that they are managing those risks, and making sure the young woman can get back into the classroom, girls get back to school, and that everything is taken care of to the best possibility. Along those lines, thinking about again, that digital platform and those digital opportunities, and wanting to come back to, thats something that wasnt necessarily said, around one we are talking about the u. S. And what i want to make sure, that what we surface is part of this is also, the challenge that we see again, within the u. S. About women, its not necessarily homogenous, and we know women of color, are being even harder hit in terms of the covid19. And i think that something we want to make sure, that we are surfacing and recognizing, when we Start Talking about solutions. So to make sure that, Financial Inclusion, social protection, you know this is changed. And its reaching the diversity of what we have. And for young women, not only is it about Small Business opportunity. Credit insurance, that henry had a spoke to, thinking about going back to the education piece. The training. Peace thinking about student loan death. Debt, and educational loans and making sure we are recognizing those burdens and those risks. And providing lending, and grants to make sure that we are thinking about that. And thinking about the diversity, of women and their needs in these policies and programs. Thats a good point, and lots of sessions like this you know should be about women, and theyre there but have two worlds, we have to its true with this pandemic has shown us the inequalities that exist. And that is racial inequality isnt gender inequalities. So a footnote, on what you said when you last interviewed petersons. And he confirmed that in many of the countries were Health Care Workers, are largely female workers, they are essential for providing care, and many countries they still dont receive a proper ppp ppe. Sorry. On that point i think, the Health Care Workers 70 of female. I just wanted to throw out, that we put together a guide for employers, and in fact actually one of them called me in pakistan, and they had closed their daycare for their employees. But in fact they open it for Health Care Workers. Thats something that other companies can do easily. Because oftentimes, there is empty space and, they could safely open, and at least four Frontline Health care, workers and teachers, and if they are forced to go back to schools, and that is one way of not just saying thank you, when you go shopping, or when you go to a medical facility, but taking care of the kids of the frontline workers. So i just wanted to add that in additional information. Thank you for doing, that let me come back now to some of the topics, when we began discussing but we dont get into too deeply, and i think it merits it more conversation, is the statistics. Even the data is pulmonary, and its unrealistic and not doing too well. This is a problem here in the United States, and im saying this anecdotally at least from emergency room doctors, and you see the numbers are down, and theyre probably up in reality. We have teachers and educators, its major fear, so what do you thinking about at the state department, on these questions. Again it existed more before this pandemic, but theyre probably getting worse because lockdowns. Well i think, i said a couple of things. First i want to get back to the last point very quickly, i want to point out here in the United States, one of three women is working in a job that is considered essential. So we are also seeing this across the world to on the same thing challenges. So we have been able to be flexible, with some of the initiatives that weve been doing over the last year, some of the gdp funded activities, and weve been able to flex into the situation. Work with their local partners, to help adapt in this tragic situation. Gender based violence is something that we in the United States that weve ramped up domestic resources, and internationally it was one of the first things that we wanted to do. When we are given additional funding by congress, to address the international consequence of the pandemic. The very first thing we wanted to do was, looked at gender based violence, and its a global program. As able its able to assist women, who are affected by it gender based violence. But we also, are looking at the various platforms that we have, early on in the pandemic, it in april, there was a Campaign Going on, in one of our embassies in the civic islands. An island called pompeii. And the federated states of micronesia. We worked with the embassy, and other embassies who had issues, in colonia. And raised issues of gender based violence. And in these islands is a huge challenge, where they have not had a big covid outbreak, but because of the economic consequences, there has been a dramatic impact on them, and theyve had to deal with that. So even in countries, where youre not seeing them under lockdown or situations like that, we have had to adjust our efforts, and address a spike in rates of gender based violence. This in part, its been woven throughout this through all of america, and that we try to ensure that, the generosity of the american people, is reaching those who are most in need. We feel real grateful really grateful, that we were able to address this, and we continue to look at opportunities, to make sure that we are, well first what we have an obligation to make sure that you know and the more than 12 billion dollars, that we have and the response to covid, is targeted to women, and its going through a vigorous analysis, to make sure that even though were trying to do this quickly, and get funded to the field very fast, in an effective way, we cannot skip that step, of making sure that were looking at it through a gender lens, and apply what were doing. And we are continuing to be creative, and really really flexible, in allowing the agencies and departments we work with, then theyve done just an incredible job. Taking the resources, about things that they were already working on, and flipping them in a way that directly affected women in a positive way. We are excited about some of the things weve been able to do, and as a result of the crisis. We had a question that just came, in its sort along the lines you were just describing, about basically womens leadership in decisionmaking, and here we are talking about how important these issues are and how many people they effect. Yet the conversation isnt yet getting to the decisionmaking, at the level youd want to see it. So someone is asking, what would you recommend increasing the decisionmaking response, and talking about policy and budgeting, and regarding covid19, is there anything we can do with that with increasing women decisionmaking in this. So goes out to any of you. I will go ahead and started, and back to where i started so first of all, dont just think of women as victims, who are sitting there waiting for somebody to come safe them. I do not know any women like that i dont know if anybody else does. But i dont think anyone on the panel today knows anyone is like that. Who are sitting around, just waiting and women are sitting you know theyre out there there driving the response to the pandemic. So just making sure that they are protected and taken you know their perspective is taken into account. We are focused on pragmatic things that we can do, to make sure that women are able to participate across all levels. When i think about what we are doing, it it matches up so well, with the efforts of building resilience, and using the guidance systems, to help build communities that can then do more to solve their own problems. But as a whole waiting for someone to come in. As it is not a model thats going to last, if we keep thinking of aid and hand out. As something you know and and honestly we are up against a big challenge. Some of the trends theyre out there, we have governments making some questionable decisions. We really want to make sure, that as countries pulling back to that at a macro level, and leaders in countries, are making decisions about trying to get you know forgiveness of debt, taking on additional debt, about how they visit allocate resources scarce resources, we are in a very heavyweight talking to these countries about the needs, and making sure that they are engaged in pro growth, pro family, economic policy, and also the resilience of their society, and and not on a path towards debt to make sure that women are not on that track, and at the highest level that is where we are really engaging that conversation across all of our developing countries. I will read between the lines, and guess youre talking to china, but i wont to put you on the spot and have you answer if you are not. So henry anna, we are getting close to the end but, our next comments might be erratic, but one thing i would love to hear from all of you, as you think about your final thoughts, if we would think big, and we are talking about a pandemic, maybe its something we havent seen in 100 years, something truly new, and a lot of people are saying the effects of this can go for many many years. Are we thinking big enough . If you could what would you do differently now. What would you tell your institutions to do. What would you like to see the world do at a higher level, and lets address some of these long term generational items. Thanks for that easy question, once again i take the bait for sure. Just to reconnect, what can we do to diversify, you know we as a we enshrined that, and wherever we have equity, we want to get to absolute parity. We are rounding out with 44 , and for promotion of women, and we are on the right track there, and that is something we need to continue, because not just on the board, but womens voices, and not just for financial performance, but all the fine as minds and government. So what would i do if i had two billion which i dont but, maybe its like having a newborn baby at home, but i would put all the money, and resources on the care question, because if we dont resolve that, and heavily invest in affordable childcare, and we know its a winwin for development, and its a win women win win for women, and its something that i think salt many other challenges. So i would heavily, join forces and that is something we are starting to think of, you know how could we expand in this infrastructure to really make sure that not just the wealthy and the privilege can access childcare, but everyone can much more benefit from this. Thats where i would. Go thank you for underlying that care crisis, i think its really important one for us to get. To the call your final thoughts as we wrap up . Cant believe we are already wrapping up, i think we are just getting started. But just a couple of last thoughts, on picking up some of the things and one point i want to come back to you, in terms of the voyage voices in the leadership, and there has been some great work done, but just a circle, and as just looking at that intergenerational aspect, we want to make sure that young women, and Young Leaders in whole, are participating and bringing their challenge, and bringing their enthusiasm, to the Covid Response and recovery. I think its often too easy for young people to be, set aside from the conversation, and what we are seeing is really young people, reattach you know and being the lead on so many issues like weve seen in Racial Justice and Climate Change and, you know we are seeing the leadership in terms of the Covid Response, whether its on the economic, side or health side, or security i was recently reading about just to give one inspiring example, a young woman 27yearold, name natalie in kenya, and she has an ngo, and shes been focusing on, combatting violence against women and girls, and she has turned her energy, into harnessing and raising resources, to bring menstrual management, and products, to rural girls. We have to the rural girls in kenya have so periods do not stop with the. Pandemic, and we know this is been a big challenge, for young women for menstruation null management, you know its been an issue for them to stay at school and workplace. So this is just one little example, of what and how young women, and young people as a whole, are helping us get through this and we want to make sure that their voices in their leadership, that we are investing in their ideas, and their potential Going Forward. Beyond that im just so glad you put that on the table, because we dont get to menstrual health, and also contraceptive, which you know women will not have access to that so many women because of this crisis. So also child service, prenatal care and theres a whole list of issues. Im sorry to cut you off a finish off nickel. Absolutely and there are so many solutions, and sometimes i feel like i cant keep up, and ive been doing some work with an initiative, which is dealing with unicef, in its multi sector platform, and its the unlimited series, and theyre young people that they engage, and a spotlight on the work theyre doing, and its really critical. But as far as critical pieces to invest in, or double down i will come back to the data, and the digital. Because i believe that both of those, being able to identify where the gaps are, and how solutions are working through and with data, its going to be critical in making sure that we are capturing that data, and investing in that digital. Because i think it bridges the remote learning, the remote work, and this is not just a new normal for now, this is a new normal for the future. And its both a challenge, and really where there is so much opportunity moving into you know the economy, and essentially its based in the Digital Infrastructure. So digital skills, additional assets access we have to make sure they are there for women of all ages everywhere, and so they can tap into the opportunity that they have. Again, that its key and its something thats important locally, and one of my hats here is empty commissioner, and d. C. , and i talk about this often even in our city policy. To make sure that people are data informed. Thats the advisory neighbor neighborhood council. Three for those who are in d. C. Yes thats a regional hazard in our industry, but unfortunately that carries over into my other life as well so yes. So in a lastminute we have left, ambassador curry what would you say. Thank you so much for the opportunity, and it is so great to hear all of the wonderful ideas, and again one of the inspiring things for me, has been watching how our partners, to development of financial help, royal fall of these partners we work with, who are just making that incredible strides, to integrate womens economic environment into their work, you know including when theyre engaging with government. I would love for us to be able to do more, and keep driving that space. We are already doing so much, and theyve just really taking this opportunity and ran with it. I agree depth you know the importance of the importance of data, one of the challenges for us is getting good data. In the quality of data. Make sure we are comparing the right things. You know like we did the women in the law survey, and you dont want to do that you have you can understand one of the challenges youre up against. And the baseline data, you know that we sent out, you could focus your programming, and your organization around this. It is challenging just to get quality data, and its more challenging for instance, we really want to be able to do a survey in sudan, but as that country is going through a major transition, and we are struggling with women in particular, for survey work. Rick getting data about women, whether they have lower access, or lower cell phone penetration. You cant do the same kind of field survey work, and actually go to where they are and get that done. It is really going to create new challenges for us on data, as this collection never mind being able to trust to make sure that, not just women but other african groups, are able to capture this data. So this is something i am really really, impressed with. As we go forward. And im glad that were working on this. Thank you thank, you and i will just pass this back to the call, but let me not just thank you to all of the panelists, and all of you who have join the conversation. And thank the atlanta council, for focusing on these issues. Hopefully you view this conversation, not thinking things are so tough and difficult, then we can never get through, hopefully instead you hear the voices that i think of safe clearly, that william that basically women can solve this problem, but its a big problem. And this is a historic opportunity in a way, at least from my seat at death ex, and youre seeing huge trillion dollar initiatives and some companies, but some countries, but it feels like its still businesses usual, and i hope that we will take the opportunity of this pandemic, and do something truly big and transformative. If we dont, i think the inequalities that have been underlined, it could just get worse. So this is a historic moment for all of us. So we will be covering it closely, to see how it develops. Thank you all again. I just want to have a chance also to say thank you, for joining us and for so well it leading our conversation, i was thrilled thrilled when you are able to join us, and i was so happy that youre here. Kelly, henry, anna thank you so much, and i just want to say thank you to everyone for tuning in, we are thrilled that you join us. And as you mentioned in the opening, the economics program, the Atlantic Council, this is the beginning of the conversation for us. We will be getting two we will continue to look at these issues, not only in our, events but on our work, and online, and everywhere so please watch this space. And we look forward to continuing the conversation with all of you. Thank you. All persons having business before the honorable, the Supreme Court of the United States, are admonished to draw near and give their attention. Landmark cases. Cspans special history series produced in cooperation with the National Constitution center, exploring the human stories and constitutional dramas behind 12 historic Supreme Court decisions. Number