MENA’s post-COVID resilience depends on using the talent pool of women
Women work on a production line at the mobile phone factory in Assuit, Egypt September 30, 2018. Picture taken September 30, 2018. REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany
Women in advanced economies worry that the COVID-19 pandemic may have set back the several decades of progress that they had made in the labor market. The lockdowns affected functions that did not lend themselves to teleworking. The worst-hit businesses were in the services, care, and hospitality sectors, which happen to be female-intensive. Therefore, the economic recession has been called a “she-cession,” which was the central theme of the 2020 Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society. Its key finding was that there will be no recovery without a “she-covery.”