ACADEMIA Letters The gender-transformative effect of COVID-19 on the economy: A view from Spain Germán Ruiz Pérez, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid INTRODUCTION This article will carry out a study of the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the dynamics of the capitalist economic model from a gender perspective, based on the study of the Spanish case. For this purpose, a response will be given to the approach which affirms that the current external shock is a window of opportunity for the arrival of a structural change in the institutions and political environments1 . What if confirmed would lead to a new economic paradigm or sub-paradigm, whose scope could disrupt current social relations, governed by a patriarchal order. In addition, to address this study, the approach that considers economics as a discipline interrelated with the other social sciences in a natural-historical process will be adopted. From a vision close to the conception of the Humanist Economy disclosed by Sampedro, and far from economism. What makes more sense given the transversal nature of pandemics, due to the interdependence between economic, health, political, environmental, and cultural problems, among others. THE PANDEMIC’S GENDER EFFECT The coronavirus has revealed the inability of the neoliberal economic model to deal with the pandemic. This has been clearly manifested in the causality between the diminished Wel1 This is the approach of the coronavirus as a “pedagogue” (Santos, 2021, p. 30), opposed to the reactionary metaphor of the virus as an enemy and the immobile metaphor of the virus as a messenger. Academia Letters, August 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Germán Ruiz Pérez, germanruizprez7@gmail.com Citation: Ruiz Pérez, G. (2021). The gender-transformative effect of COVID-19 on the economy: A view from Spain. Academia Letters, Article 3331. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3331. 1 fare States and the lack of means to guarantee health care for the entire population (BarreraAlgarín, Francisco, Luis, & Vallejo Andrada, 2020). Situation perceived with particular harshness in Spain, where public health spending has fallen from 6.6% of GDP in 2009 to 5.9% in 2018, figures far from the 7.1% average for the European Union (Eurostat, 2020a). What is added to a vertiginous growth of the levels of inequality and poverty. Thus, it is estimated that, only in 2020, the Spanish population at risk of poverty would have gone from 20.7% to 22.95% and the Gini index from 33 to 34.15 points (Oxfam, 2021, pp. 10- 11). The empirical evidence alerts us to the danger posed by the capitalist system in its current phase for the maintenance of decent living standards. Consequently, the revaluation of principles of equity underestimated by the neoclassical school of thought is perceived has necessary. Highlighting the importance of elements historically claimed by feminist economics such as care work. To synthesize the gender impact of the coronavirus in the terms studied, the analysis of the Spanish Institute for Women and for Equal Opportunities (2020) serves as a reference. This organisation dissects the effect into four axes: the overload of health work and essential services, the increase in job insecurity, the centrality of informal care work, and the greater risk of suffering gender violence. Firstly, as women dominate front-line care professions such as nursing or social work, they were more intensely exposed to the virus during lockdown2 . Which is added to essential professions also feminized as cleaners, cashiers, and shop assistants. However, despite its fundamental role, the visible faces of the management of the pandemic in 2020 in Spain have been male. Likewise, in the post-confinement scenario, women workers have also been exposed to a greater epidemiological risk, since jobs in the service sector in which it has been impossible to implement telework, such as hostelry and tourism, are also strongly feminized (Sandbu, 2020, p. 6). Secondly, contrary to the previous economic crisis, the current crisis has widened the gap in labour inequality in Spain. In the third quarter of 2020, the female unemployment rate rose 0.62 percentage points more than among men, being Spain the european country where this type of unemployment grew the most. And, although the employment rate is recovering, the gap between men and women is wider than at the beginning of 2020 (INE, 2021). This is added to the structural precarious conditions of female employment, with a partiality of 74.03%, a pay gap of 21.41% and 57.66% of the total inactive population (UGT, 2021). In addition, 29% of women will work in Spain in sectors severely affected by closures, compared to 21% of men (IMF, 2020). Thus, despite the fact that women represent 48% of the salaried 2 The health workers, in the first line of response to the coronavirus, are 66% made up of women, reaching 84% in the case of nurses (Instituto de la Mujer, 2020, p. 6). Academia Letters, August 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Germán Ruiz Pérez, germanruizprez7@gmail.com Citation: Ruiz Pérez, G. (2021). The gender-transformative effect of COVID-19 on the economy: A view from Spain. Academia Letters, Article 3331. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3331. 2 population, the number of workers in ERTE rose to 51% in May 2020 (CCOO, 2020, p. 4). It is also necessary to highlight the severe effect of the pandemic on informal workers, who, during confinement, had to face the immediate loss of income without any type of compensation. Migrant women are left in a particularly vulnerable position. In Spain, the ILO (2018a) estimates that 27.3% of workers are informal, rising in the case of women to 28.7%. Thus, an especially affected sector would be that of paid domestic work, where 30% of household employees are not registered with Social Security, and in the case of being registered mostly contribute for less than the hours worked3 . Thirdly, women unpaid domestic work increased by an additional 2 hours during the first wave of the pandemic (IMF, 2020). There are multiple studies carried out on this issue and they all reach the same conclusion (González, 2020). The women’s care work raised as a result of the longer stay of the at home, taking greater responsibility for monitoring the telematic education of minors and easing men to work or telework (Mansilla, 2020, p. 68). Being aggravated the situation of structural inequality inherent in the capitalist system, according to which 76.2% of the total hours dedicated to unpaid care work is carried out by women —4.1 hours more than the average of unpaid work— (ILO, 2018b). What makes women systematically poorer than men also in time (Staab, 2020). Parallel to domestic work, lockdown in the private sphere makes violence more invisible. In this sense, an increase in sexist violence can be seen in various parts of the world, including Spain, which manifested an increase in calls to help lines against domestic violence (Sosa Troya & Torres Menárguez, 2020; Santos, 2021, p. 149). CONCLUSION COVID-19 has hit the most vulnerable sectors of the population hardest, further widening the large gender gaps in our society. Besides, the effects of the crisis on a gender perspective have followed the same pattern worldwide, pushing 47 million women and girls into extreme poverty in 2021 (Guterres, 2020). Consequently, the pandemic has shown the dysfunctionality of the neoliberal economic model to deal with gender inequalities, which has also been perceived by the main international organizations globally. In this regard, the speeches of the representatives of the main international organizations are meaningful. António Guterres (2020), Secretary General of the United Nations, and Kristalina Georgieva (2020), director of the IMF, have claimed the current momentum for the creation of a new social contract similar to Bretton Woods, in where gender equality should be one of the cornerstones of consensus. 3 The ILO (2020) estimates that the relative poverty rate among informal workers has increased by 21 percentage points in the first month of the pandemic in upper-middle-income countries. Academia Letters, August 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Germán Ruiz Pérez, germanruizprez7@gmail.com Citation: Ruiz Pérez, G. (2021). The gender-transformative effect of COVID-19 on the economy: A view from Spain. Academia Letters, Article 3331. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3331. 3 Finally, despite the negative situation, the centrality of the work carried out by women revealed by the pandemic serves as a turning point to rethink a better future. Caregiving tasks associated with female gender roles, despite being fundamental, has not historically been considered as work due to fetishism of commodities. However, the clarity with which the dominance model of the alliance between capitalism and patriarchy has been manifested claims more than ever the structural inequalities behind unpaid care work. In sum, the current extraordinary context encourages the creation of a new social contract with a gender perspective. In this direction, formal policies are being carried out, such as the inclusion of feminism in State policies, through the creation of specific Ministries dedicated to gender equality in Western countries, and the proposal of UN Women and ECLAC (2020) that urge to invest in care policies to end this form of exploitation. REFERENCES Barrera-Algarín, E., Francisco, E.-M., Luis, S.-S.-S. J., & Vallejo Andrada, A. COVID-19, neoliberalismo y sistemas sanitarios en 30 países de Europa: Repercusiones en el número de fallecidos. Rev Esp Salud Pública, 28(94). doi:e202010140 CCOO. (2020). El impacto de los ERTE en el empleo de las mujeres. Madrid. Obtained from https://www.ccoo.es/5e038893122dd215130ded8ab2a53be1000001.pdf Eurostat. (2020a). General government expenditure by function (COFOG). Obtained from https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/gov_10a_exp/default/table?lang=en Georgevia, K. Un nuevo momento de Bretton Woods. (F. M. Internacional, Ed.) 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