Among the few perks of growing up in a country recovering from a communist regime was that I hardly ever contemplated workplace gender equality. 
 
In the late 1940s, socialist regimes located behind the Iron Curtain championed policies aimed at women’s emancipation, passing laws that guaranteed women’s equality in society and marriage, all of which ensure that women become productive members of society who work and more easily engage in political activism.
 
This culture of equal opportunity was strongly pronounced in my life since an early age and effectively nurtured Bulgaria as one of the highest performing economies where women’s legal rights in the workplace are concerned.
 
You can imagine, then, my dismay at yesterday’s findings from UNISON, according to which significant progress, made over more than 50 years,towards economic equality is rapidly going into reverse as the pandemic continues.
 
As part of the equality survey, 7.5% of female respondents have seen their wages cut while 12% more are in debt since the start of the outbreak. One reason for that is the fact that women make up around three-quarters of the part-time labour force today; the same jobs that fell by nearly 70% in the first three months of the pandemic.
 
The long-term effects of this reverse in financial equality are yet to be fully unveiled. First comes the economic case for gender equality: the more women work, the more the economy is likely to grow. Research shows that an increase in female employment rates in OECD countries to match that of Sweden could boost GDP by more than $6 trillion. Conversely, estimates indicate that gender gaps cost economies in the OECD some 15% of GDP annually.
 
Next are the more subtle costs. In the long run, the prospect of low pay and job loss means pension poverty for women inevitably translating into a significant increase in pension injustice. The effects of that would impact the economy’s growth and financial gender inequalities. 
 
Like many other girls, being surrounded by strong, driven women as I was growing up showed me first-hand what resilience and hard work looks like. We must not allow women to bear the lion’s share of the pandemic’s economic burden. It’s a cost I am simply not willing to count.