Gendering employment law in the wake of the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

It has been three years since Aotearoa | New Zealand experienced its first nationwide lockdown in response to the global outbreak of the Covid-19 virus. Challenges stemming from the pandemic have been far reaching and pervasive as well as particularly severe in the employment context. Less than a year into the pandemic, Maria Hayes and I published a gender sensitive analysis of some of these challenges, outlining the disproportionate gender impact of various measures adopted to meet the disease.1 Our article showed that, at least in the early days of the pandemic, a raft of gendered inequalities appeared in relation to occupational health and safety risks; the value of care; unemployment; old age; and violence and abuse. Our analysis, moreover, concurred with that of Matthew Scobie and Anna Sturman,2 in that it revealed an intersectional negative disproportionate effect on Māori and Pasifika women.
Overall, while the Aotearoa | New Zealand Government’s response to the pandemic was largely effective in containing the outbreak until the vaccine rollout could be implemented, we found that its policy response distinctly lacked gender analysis which, in turn, contributed to widening the gender equality gap.3 We argued that the Covid-19 pandemic represented a crucial juncture and an opportunity for rethinking accepted labour standards and concepts under a gender lens. Based on our analytical reflections, we invited reflections on the relation between the economy and employment law and, in particular, we supported the reassessment of the value of work with a view to include production on an equal basis with reproduction.