the crisis would hit women harder

The coronavirus crisis has economic impacts that are starting to be felt severely on the situation of households. Causing loss of jobs, income and difficulties in daycare, the pandemic more specifically affects women.

The health crisis has become economic: it would have tipped a million French people below the monetary poverty line, according to the Federation of Actors of Solidarity, that is to say less than 1063 euros per month for a household. On Tuesday, October 6, 2020, new figures illustrated the increase in the number of people receiving the Active Solidarity Income (RSA), and the spectacular increase in registrations to food banks, whose distributions have increased by 25%.

Guest on France Culture this Wednesday, October 7, 2020, Manuel Domergue, director of studies of the Abbé Pierre foundation, indicates: "We do not yet have public statistics from INSEE on the increase in poverty, but many indications on the ground show that there are many more poor people than before and above all, than that. is set to increase. Food distributions are a pretty clear sign. "
At the beginning of October, Olivier Véran himself communicated this increase, referring to the 8 million people in need of this aid, against 5.5 million in 2019.

The coronavirus crisis has also severely affected people in precarious jobs: temporary workers, self-employed persons, undeclared personal services … It may also have caused many difficulties in resuming employment, due to the reduction in childcare arrangements. However, it is still women who are most affected by these issues.

Single mothers highly represented among the precarious

When we look at the poverty figures in France, it is striking to note that a third of poor households are single-parent families, according to the latest 2017 survey by INSEE. These households where there is only one parent are 85% made up of single mothers, according to an article from the Equality Laboratory published in Liberation in March 2019. For these heads of families, the closure of schools has accentuated custody issues. And also more complicated to send them to their grandparents … These mothers who raise their children alone are also over-represented among precarious workers. Olga Trostiansky of the Equality Lab describes the typical precarious worker as "a young, urban woman, at the head of a single-parent family, who does not manage to integrate permanently into the labor market."

These precarious jobs are the first to be cut and continue to be cut in the context of the economic crisis that follows the health crisis. Globally, the picture is no better: "The COVID-19 pandemic and its side effects – such as the economic and financial crisis – are deeply sexist", notes Delphine Pinault, spokesperson for the NGO CARE, who specifies: "Women and girls are disproportionately impacted: first because they are more exposed to the virus – globally, they represent more than 70% of the health workforce – second because many are in informal jobs with little legal and social protection, hardest hit by the economic crisis ".