Baroness Wilcox of Newport
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Covid-19: Women
Baroness Wilcox of Newport Excerpts(3 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Wilcox of Newport
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that (1) women, and (2) groups which represent women, are included in the development of their policies responding to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education and Department for International Trade (Baroness Berridge) (Con)
My Lords, we continue to listen to the experiences of women as we respond to the Covid-19 crisis. Ministers and their officials carefully consider evidence on how different people have been affected by the pandemic. That includes meeting many women and the groups representing them. I recently met with women from Leicester and Leeds at virtual round tables to discuss home-schooling, childcare, flexible working and parents’ and children’s mental health.
Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab) [V]
The Commons report, Unequal Impact? Coronavirus and the Gendered Economic Impact, found that
“the Government’s priorities for recovery are heavily gendered in nature.”
A report published just this morning by the ONS on the differential impact of the coronavirus pandemic on men and women said:
“While more men died from Covid-19, women’s well-being was more negatively affected than men’s during the first year of the pandemic.”
Does the Minister agree that the Government must work harder at addressing this imbalance and that women, and the views of women, must be included in current policy development?
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, the effects of the pandemic are indeed differential across a number of factors. We have invested half a billion pounds in mental health services and recognise that women have taken on more responsibility in the home in terms of childcare and home-schooling, but, thankfully, schools are back as of Monday. We are looking closely at the data, to then analyse it. That will inform our policy development, as will, as I have outlined, meeting with women’s groups.