Covid-19: Disparate Impact

Debate between Kemi Badenoch and Claire Hanna

Thursday 22nd October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

That noise may have been a passing motorbike.

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP) [V]]

It is very clear that, alongside BAME communities, women have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. They make up the large majority of workers in those sectors that are unable to operate and in very many cases they are obviously carrying much larger roles in caring, both informally and formally. Northern Ireland already had the lowest levels of employment for women, and that is in the context of the UK, even before the pandemic, slipping down gender inequality rankings. Will the Minister be advocating for specific targeted economic support for women to address the structural inequalities that are being very much exacerbated by covid-19?

[Kemi Badenoch]

The approach that the Government Equalities Office is taking is that support has to be given in the round. We are not isolated as individuals and we are certainly not segregating. On gender, for example, in the work we have been looking at in this report, it is men who are disproportionately impacted medically. Economically, depending on the sector they work in, it is women who are disproportionately impacted. We need to look at helping everybody. What we are not able to do is say—in fact, it might contravene the Equality 2010 Act—that we will give specific help to women, but not to men or to specific groups based on protected characteristics. We need to provide support to people based on need and that is what we will continue to do.