Recovery, Renewal, Resilience

The UN reported that Moroccan women accounted for just 21% of the country’s labour force, with 54% of those working concentrated in the informal sector (World Bank estimates 2019). The impacts of the pandemic on these trends are illustrated in a recent UK report by the Women and Equalities Committee. The report highlights that women were ‘a third more likely to be employed in sectors that were “shut down” during the first national lockdown, and thus disproportionately at risk of job loss’. The recommendations set out in this report and a UN Policy Brief prompt thinking as to how recovery strategies can address impacts, mitigate the reinforcement of inequalities and how renewal initiatives can transform the position of women in the labour market. Consider:

• Review schemes that were introduced to protect jobs and income to identify inequalities that may have been exacerbated. Integrate knowledge gained from this review into future crisis planning (e.g. integrate an ‘Equality Impact Assessment’ that will draw on evidence of existing inequalities to inform employment support schemes that may be required during future crises)
• Ensure women are equally represented in the planning and decision-making processes for recovery strategies and renewal initiatives
• Identify how the pandemic has had gendered effects on predominantly female run businesses (e.g. closures of businesses such as hairdressers), and if targeted support may be required as part of recovery planning. Repeat this for other communities/groups to identify whether they have been disproportionately impacted by the effects of COVID-19 and containment measures
• Conduct a gender analysis on recovery strategies and renewal initiatives to ensure that national and local investment plans will not create unequal outcomes for men and women, and reproduce inequalities (e.g. underrepresentation of women in sectors such as ‘science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM)’, which have been targeted for investment globally)
• As part of local and national economic regeneration programmes, ‘fund training schemes specifically aimed at women’ and other minority groups to increase ‘representation and career progression in the Digital, AI and the Green Economy sectors’
• Review policy and legislation around flexible working to ensure they reflect the positive lessons learned on remote and flexible working during the pandemic
• Actively support legislation to expand redundancy protection to protect pregnant women and new mothers
• Recognise that women are not a homogenous groups - review equalities data to ensure that large data sets consider how other factors (e.g. race, class, religion and others) combine to shape the experiences of women in the labour market

The significant impacts of COVID-19 have created new groups of vulnerable people, such as people on middle-incomes and small businesses owners who have experienced a sudden loss of income and are now financially vulnerable. These new vulnerable groups have not before been targeted for social protection. Consider how other countries have expanded existing systems to support newly vulnerable people, for example:

• Adjust social protection programmes to give flexibility that can adjust to changing public health situations:
  • Directly link social protection measures to region-specific health or lockdown measures, e.g. tie social protection policies to tiers/categories in health responses
  • Establish a trigger system to rapidly adjust social protection measures to affected areas and groups
• Enable vulnerable people to access the assistance they need:
  • Establish a beneficiary database to identify and assess the social protection needs of newly vulnerable people
  • Partner with existing community organisations to identify vulnerable people, develop community-based targeting, and ensure those who become newly vulnerable are not excluded
  • Facilitate vulnerable individuals to self-identify through a registration service, e.g. online application, supported by a means test for verification
  • Expand sources of data to identify and verify intended beneficiaries, e.g. electricity or bank account data, employer’s redundancy data
• Revise legislation surrounding conditionality requirements, e.g. loosening conditionality principles of social protection programmes:
  • Morocco transformed ‘conditional cash transfer’ (CCTs) to ‘labelled cash transfer’ (LTCs) by removing the conditionality of continued school enrolment for cash transfers - resulting in reduced costs of programme implementation and reported increases in school enrolment and participation of children

Local government should analyse their local communities by disaggregating all data collected by important characteristics (e.g. sex, age, and disability) to ensure that they can target those communities appropriately. Information should then be provided in a format and manner that makes it accessible to all, accounting for vulnerabilities in the community. Local government should consider IFRC Guidelines on this to support vulnerable people.

Local government should disseminate information in appropriate formats to ensure all communities receive information that is accurate and helpful to them. This will involve mapping community groups to understand their: individual characteristics; information needs; effective channels; appropriate languages and presentation.

Local government should help the public to access public health information and consider the effectiveness of different ways that public health information is disseminated. An 'information for all' approach is needed so that those with disabilities are included. This may include translation of information into brail, use of audio information, and signed videos for the deaf community.