Recovery and resilience

Recovery & resilience

Ballerina Fang Zhengjing dances in a special public performance, gracefully expressing the human will to struggle and survive, but also to revive and thrive. The pandemic has profoundly affected the art and culture industry in China, which is valued at 4.2 per cent of its GDP. Over 8,000 live performances were canceled, with an estimated loss of over 1 billion dollars. While artists and institutions have struggled, they have also been driven to innovate and engage new audiences online. Photo: Shi Yingxi

COVID-19 has had a big impact on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) which, with their more limited inventories, client bases, cash reserves and credit options, find it harder than larger businesses to absorb shocks. For women-run SMEs these risks are amplified by their poorer access to financial services and assets, information, communication technologies and business networks, which are more readily available to men.

Women globally are meanwhile much more likely to work in lower-paid, part-time, and informal employment, with little or no income security and social protection, such as health insurance.

As such, UN Women works with governments to make sure that, among other priorities, the needs of women employees and workers are at the heart of pandemic response plans; that women-owned and led businesses are supported with measures like grants and subsidies; and that informal workers are fully recognized and supported, along with groups that face magnified discrimination. It is particularly important for the care economy to be made fairer, and founded on measures like paid leave, flexible working arrangements, and attitude changes around gender and care work.

Members of the Guanglin Cooperative, a women-led agricultural cooperative in Qinghai province, showcase their produce, while their leader Tie Lingmei distributes food to residents who live under the poverty line. Photo: UN Women

After the initial outbreak, a vendor who sells clothing and other everyday necessities returns to work despite the cold. Photo: Lu Yang

Hairdressers are able to welcome customers again. Photo: Anonymous

A caterer helps carry goods and deliver fresh ingredients during the pandemic. Photo: Anonymous