The 50/50 Foundation hosted a virtual COVID Gender Network roundtable in which we heard what a number of women’s advocacy groups, academics and rights organisations are doing in response to the pandemic. The discussion focused specifically on tracking unpaid work and care – a critical issue that has become the focus of the Foundation’s current research. 

Following the roundtable, BroadAgenda recorded an interview with one of the participants, Liz Broderick, past Sex Discrimination Commissioner and now Deputy Chair of the UN Working Group on discrimination against women and girls at the UN Human Rights Council.  The Working Group has released a statement calling on all governments, ours included, to better protect women and girls in COVID policy responses. 

Unfailingly generous with her time, Liz discusses how a global “reimagining is required” and indeed possible. “It’s an opportunity to put care at the centre of societies, the economy, our wellbeing and then see what will shift.” She also explains the UN’s fear that home isolation is placing 980 million women in danger, given that “for nearly 1 billion women we know that home is not a safe place.”