Whether or not we knew this downfall was coming; whether or not the world was prepared for this emergency, we are the few who are willing and able to stand up and stop the cyclical disenfranchising of women and minorities. Finding the potential to succeed within the festering mess that is our planet is not where women would have liked to start off, but it is the foundation of our story to mold. We need to dig deep to find out how each of us can make different choices to empower the success of others, which in turn empowers the success of our society as a whole. It is the responsibility of each of us to become allies of equality, no matter what gender or socioeconomic position because we all have the chance during these daunting times to make a difference. Making that difference for one woman compounds itself as she is finally able to empower other women in her own success. However, since coronavirus the spike in layoffs, quarantines and shutdowns have disproportionately affected more women than men which has in effect backtracked the state of gender equality in the workplace. 

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Due to the coronavirus shutdown, issues of inequality have become exacerbated within every sector, spilling out onto other sectors of life, creating more barriers for women to be valued for their work. These barriers to enter the workplace are intersectional: affected by factors such as age, gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic position which compounds on each other becoming an impassable mountain for women to overcome or be doomed to failure.

 

The only way out from here is by working through each sector, spelling out the common pitfalls and creating new safety nets that open doors for women to regain all they have lost. We need to see the through-line of the inequality and gather as many allies within each sector to begin to crumble the structures, assumptions and interpersonal attitudes that hurt not only women, but all of society. The largest issues that women face today in North and South America are the barriers to enter into the workforce, the problems of increasing their value over their career and the engendered norms of interpersonal communication perpetuated by society. 

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Scrutinizing these multi-faceted barriers for women at every step of their career will help anyone realize that it takes many cards to align perfectly for a woman to be able to start and maintain her career. From daily childcare and the devaluation of women’s work to the gender digital divide, women find an increasing number of closed doors just to be able to enter the workforce. Those who have been successful finding paid work, are now finding they are suddenly no longer of value because of the COVID-related shutdowns. Red flags should be raised when 865,000 women completely left the workforce, four times the amount of men. We need to be especially concerned for Latina and Black women who are facing an 11% unemployment rate, compared to 6.3% for white men (Connley, 2020). This shows how it is harder for a woman, especially a woman of color, to maintain her position and increase her value over her career. The lack of training and development opportunities for women to learn in-demand work skills prevent them from being able to make a career jump to an industry that can continue working during this pandemic. Because these barriers force women to take on work responsibilities without demanding for equality, women set the standard that they can do more for less, but that is quickly changing with our work towards gender equality.  Women are resilient: by opening one door for one woman, she will in turn pave the way for countless others, empowering the independence of members of her society and boosting the economic value of her entire community. How? Setting up the expectations for women to be able to hold themselves of a higher standard, shows other women what it looks like to know their worth as an equal.