Problems caused by COVID-19 and Its Impact on Gender Issues and Inequality
Introduction:
Corona virus has been the talk of the year since the start of 2020, the first case detected in China in January has now spread almost all around the world infecting thousands today. The virus has greatly impacted the countries, mainly their economies and the sectors that contribute to the growth of the countries. Moreover, the most affected sector around the world has been the tourism sector in which the individuals have lost their jobs and companies has been shut due to the strict lockdown and social distancing measures. This has dampened the revenue of the sector and has accumulated a huge amount of loss in the world. The report will illustrate the issue of COVID-19 impacting the tourism sector which is causing an increase in the employment rates. Moreover, an analysis of the issue regarding gender inequality will also be done along with the three approaches. In the end, recommendations would be given for the government to help the sector and the employees.
Identification of the broader issue that COVID is causing/exacerbating:
Corona virus has caused devastating problems all around the world and is predicted to cause more problems in the future. Moreover, the economy of various countries has been impacted due to the virus, economic problem is the major issue created by the virus. The virus has affected multiple sectors in the economy like the decrease of revenue of Tourism sector as many countries have shut down their airports to stall the virus from spreading. Furthermore, it was estimated that due to corona virus there has been a loss of two hundred billion dollars globally (Ozili & Arun, 2020). Another main sector that is impacted by corona is the labor market, many of the individuals have lost their jobs to corona. The unemployment in most of the countries has reached to a double digit figure and it has been really hard to control it. Big companies have fired many of their employees due to strict lockdowns in various countries taking the unemployment rate up to 14.7% globally (Long & Van Dam, 2020). Moreover, the transportation sector has also been impacted due to the deadly virus. The closing of the boundaries along with the daily business activities has been a major downfall for most of the economies (Gossling, Scott & Hall, 2020). These all sectors have an impact on the economy of the world in terms of revenue and other economic indicators.
Define the problem that you will be exploring:
The problem that the report will be exploring is the impact of Corona on tourism sector that has a direct effect on the employment of the sector. The tourism sector has faced a major loss of revenue, it was recorded that there was a decrease of sixty seven million arrivals. Furthermore, during the first few months of 2020 there was loss of eighty billion dollars in terms of exports earning through tourism (Zarrilli, 2020). As discussed above the virus have had a disturbing impact on different sectors but tourism sector took the worst hit. Not only the tourism activities have diminished but also the employment of that sector has been increasingly influenced. The majority of the sector consists of women employees, the sector offers women low skilled jobs. A major chunk of the women population is employed in service sectors, for instance, accommodation and food (Zarrilli, 2020). In developing countries about 70% of the women are employed in informal sector and these countries earn a good amount from their tourism sector. For instance, the tourism industry in Fiji accounts for about forty percent of the total GDP. The women in Fiji’s tourism sector constitutes about a third of the labour force but women are employed at a lower level like cleaning staff and receptionist. Only a small percent of the women are employed at management level job (Moriarty, MacRae, Singh, Nabulivou & Leli, 2020). This indicates that the sector with a bigger population of women have took the greatest hit from the corona and were the first ones to experience strict policies from the government. The government has done nothing to protect the women in this sector due to the temperament of their employment, either the women are a part time worker or night shift worker (Durant, 2020).
Analysis of the problem:
System Thinking Approach:
This concept is referred as “systems thinking as the art and science of making reliable inferences about behavior by developing an increasingly deep understanding of underlying structure” (Agresti, 2006). The corona virus has impacted many of the women working in the tourism sector as the sector majorly comprises of female workforce at a lower level. The women have lost their jobs as well as there is no means for earning for them. Along with the impact of the virus there are other systemic restrictions which aren’t helping women to overcome their worries due to the virus. There are no protection policies for the women, no check and balance by the government and no alternative employment provided by other companies (Madgavkar, White, Krishnan, Mahajan & Azcue, 2020). The gender inequality needs a solution which removes the obstacles in front of the women step by step.
The First Principle of Economics:
There are four principles of economics which includes scarcity forces trade-offs that indicates in order to attain a feature of a product another product’s value must be abandoned (Fischer, 2017). Opportunity costs means to choose the next best alternative, the third one is about Rational people makes choices at the margin which denotes to the smallest augmented changes to an idea. The last principle is about people responding to incentives, this principle revolves around the comparative analysis of benefits and cost during decision making that includes people making decisions about any incentives provided to them (Quddus & Hurton, 2002). When implementing these principles to the issue of gender inequality in tourism sector, there has been a scarcity of employment due to the virus’ deadly impact on the sector. The sufferers are women because they lost their jobs and employment opportunities for the low skilled women are scarce (Lavietes, 2020). They would take up any job to provide basic necessities to their homes. The same is implemented for the second principle, the women would take up anything which they think would provide their families with basic necessities. Moreover, when talking about incentives the women would prefer government welfare provided to them in case of loss of their employment. These women don’t have any employment through which they could provide bread to their family so they would opt for the easy way out.
Evaluation Concept:
This concept involves to value various physical things, it also includes to promote the reorganization of resources along with risk analysis. The concept includes scale, scope, time, geography. In case of the gender inequality in tourism sector, evaluation concepts can help to solve the problem through extensive assessment. The scale talks about the recognized phase on which the problem is examined, majority of the women are employed at a lower level. The women working at this level are not protected through employment policies by the government. The scope concepts identify multiple issues within a major problem, for instance, due to the loss of unemployment in the tourism sector there would be a lack of basic necessities in these women’s houses. The women won’t be able to get an alternative job in any sector, purchasing power of the disturbed families would drastically decrease and there would be many issues identified for this major problem. The third concept is time which refers to the particular time of the analysis of the issue, the specific time would be till corona virus ends globally. The last concept includes geography which refers to the location through which the analysis of the virus would occur, the countries whose tourism sector is diminishing would come under this concept mainly the developing countries.
