#GAReads | Ignoring effects of COVID-19 on women could cost $5tn, warns Melinda Gates
photo credit: engin akyurt, via Unsplash (cropped)
“Ignoring effects of Covid-19 on women could cost $5tn, warns Melinda Gates“:
“World leaders have kids at home right now. World leaders are seeing their wives have to drop out of the workforce or take care of an elderly parent. So I think leaders are waking up to this, and what I think you’re going to see is the coalition of leaders who say: ‘This is how we’re going to get recovery – we’re going to get recovery if we start to get equality,’” she said.
Gates’ paper, published in Foreign Affairs magazine prior to the G20 meetings of finance ministers and central bank governors at the weekend, looks at the toll the pandemic is taking on women and calls on policymakers to “use this emergency as an opportunity to replace old systems with new and better ones”.