According to the former Executive Director of United Nations Women, Dr. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the COVID-19 era has introduced a set of new challenges in the journey of women empowerment.
Mlambo-Ngcuka disclosed this as she addressed Africa’s Webinar on Informing, Empowering Women and Enhancing Gender Equality hosted by the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) in South Africa. The webinar’s objective, bringing African women together, was to exchange information on the empowerment of women and achieve gender equality.
“Women have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic. Two-thirds of the jobs that were lost during the pandemic were lost by women. Women were also flooded by unpaid care work. Women have no digital literacy so they lost jobs [and] women experienced higher levels of gender-based violence. All these are the issues we have to address as we rebuild after the pandemic” she said.
Mlambo-Ngcuka focused on gender inequality and explained it as an all-inclusive process with efforts from men needed too. She called for greater investments in the women’s agenda believing that it can help create progress with the implementation of the Generation Equality first-ever.
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