Podcast: Why the pandemic has been worse for women: insights from UN Women's Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka

TRANSCRIPT: Why the pandemic has been worse for women: insights from UN Women's Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka:

We estimate that about 11 million girls would not go back to school ever after the pandemic, so that's a big setback.

Ian Bremmer:

Hello and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. Here, you'll find extended versions of the interviews from my show on public television. I'm Ian Bremmer, and today, we are looking at the impact the pandemic has had on women globally. How much progress has been eroded in the wake of job losses and a rise in gender-based violence and economic inequality, and how that trend could be reversed as societies rebuild. I'll ask one of the top experts in the world, the United Nations under-secretary-general and former deputy president of South Africa, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. Let's get to it.

Announcer:

The GZERO World Podcast is brought to you by our founding sponsor, First Republic. First Republic, a private bank and wealth management company understands the value of service, safety and stability in today's uncertain worlds. Visit firstrepublic.com to learn more.

Ian Bremmer:

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, she is the executive director in charge of women for the United Nations, not a small job. Also the first deputy president in South Africa's history. Phumzile, thanks so much for joining me today.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka:

Thank you so much for having me.

Ian Bremmer:

So you've been at the United Nations for almost a decade now. I'd like to talk to you a little bit about just the trajectory of women's rights and the progress that has been made over the course of your tenure. What's been most startling? What are the takeaways that we can be optimistic about?

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka:

It used to be that gender equality was a woman's business, but we used this last decade especially to push it to be everyone's business, to be the media's business, to be men and boys' business, to be sports persons' business, to be private sector's business. We've not reached the peak that we would like to reach, but it's now difficult for anyone who represents something to not care. And we are hoping that we can tend that into actions on their part. We now need scale and we need bolder actions.

Ian Bremmer:

Globalization has driven extraordinary wealth. There's been this rise of a global middle class. Are women keeping up with that trajectory? Where are the places where we can say globalization is truly giving women the kind of opportunities that we should be proud of?

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka:

Well, women are definitely not anywhere near where the male counterparts are in terms of amassing wealth in a time of globalization. But interestingly, China is one of the interesting countries. It's one of the countries... Of course their population also helps, but it's one of the countries where you've seen women who have definitely been able to enter the men's clubs in terms of their possession of wealth. Most of it at the same time being also wealth that has been inherited from family. But you also see women who are self-driven millionaires and above.

Ian Bremmer:

And when you think about globalization, another thing that is part and parcel is urbanization. And certainly when I think about Sub-Saharan Africa, I think about how we need to ensure that people are getting educated. That if women get educated, they're going to have better opportunities for jobs. They're not going to have eight children per family, they're going to have more like two to four. I mean, life just becomes so much easier in so many ways. In other words, how much of this is being driven by the economic change happening in the world as opposed to the political changes that we're pushing on?

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka:

The improvement of the economic status of women is probably driven more by their own education because women have been increasingly graduating on top of their class and in many countries, doing better than boys. The macroeconomic policies of most countries are not gender responsive. One area that is of concern for us, for instance, is just equal pay. The fact that you still have predominantly women who are not paid the same amount of money for work of equal value. The positioning of women in the private sector in particular doesn't put women in the commanding heights of economies. And of course, there's still a high level of segregation, where women are positioned in the softer side of business even when they have the skills to be in the part of the business that makes the money.

Ian Bremmer:

Are the Nordic countries setting the standards for the world right now still in terms of treatment of women, benefits for women, integration of women broadly in the economy?

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka:

Yes, by and large. I mean the country that ticks most boxes for gender equality is still Finland. Sorry, it's still Iceland. It does better than anyone else. And in the top 10, all the Nordics are in there. So yes, they still do much better. But surprise, surprise, they still have a challenge when it comes to violence against women. That is as big a problem in those countries as it is everywhere else and in the world. And that is really a great concern for all of us. And this is one area they are also paying significant attention to. And of course representation of women, especially in the private sector, is also not keeping up. They have done well in the public sector. Most countries are better in the public sector than they are in the private sector.

Ian Bremmer:

When you came first to the United Nations, when you come here from South Africa and you see on the one hand, an enormous amount of news attention and headlines to gender issues driven most importantly by #MeToo Campaign, I mean, do you see the Americans focusing on the right issues in terms of gender or do you think that we get too spun up over the things that don't matter as much?

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka:

Well, harassment of women at the workplace is a significant issue. So they were spot on in making that a big issue. When we were in Beijing 25 years ago, when Hillary Clinton said, "Women's rights are human rights and human rights are women's rights," she was stating the obvious. But this was not obvious to everybody. People used to treat women's issues as just development issues, not rights. Many countries did not have, for instance, legislation that criminalizes violence against women, especially domestic violence. And the denial of opportunities to women was not seen as a violation of human rights. That statement was reminding everybody that this is the case. And in the last 20 years, we have seen the women's movement making that case over and over again. So we evolved jurisprudence that did not exist to the extent that it exists today of women's oppression as a violation of a right.

But we have not reached a point where there's a correlation between ending violation in law, realizing those rights, and then having the means in terms of programs and initiatives that then advance women economically and otherwise. And that's more or less the crossroads we're at now. A much better grasp of the rights issue as far as women are concerned, limited resources still that go to supporting the work that should give women relief. And then COVID happened and we are like, "Oh my goodness."

And now we are driving a program that is looking at how we closed the gap that we identified when we reviewed the 25 years of implementing the Beijing Declaration. And I follow you. I know you're always talking to very important people. We need to get people to say, "Building back better in a greener and a gender responsive manner as well as in an equitable manner." Because if you don't mention the gender responsive building back better, you're going to build back bad because you are going to leave out the people who were disproportionately affected by the pandemic. So we still have all of those issues needing to be pushed forward together.

Ian Bremmer:

And when you say women's rights are human rights, we also know that the agenda, the global agenda for human rights is not where we want it to be right now. There's a lot of hypocrisy coming from my own country. There's a lot of whitewashing being done by countries with a horrible human rights records. What is irritating you the most right now?

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka:

I mean, the obsession about controlling women's bodies is really something that also shocked me when I got to the UN. It is an issue in every commission on the status of women. It doesn't matter what the theme is, that always comes up as one issue that divide countries. So if you consider that women's reproductive rights and health are so fundamental to women's ability to prosper, to progress, for women not to have the freedom in every country, to have access to contraceptives, to make decisions about their body the way they want to, this is something that irritates me immensely. But of course, I must be careful not to be too irritated and be paralyzed. I must keep working on it, keep inching in, keep winning people on the other side so that we can make progress.

Ian Bremmer:

It's important because so many people think that, okay, you move from being a developing country to a developed country as if everyone inexorably is always on the same path. And yet we see that actually you can backslide quite a bit on many of these issues. Look at what's happening in many states across the United States right now. I mean on fundamental issues of reproductive health, countries are moving in a direction that you would think would not be possible right now.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka:

Yeah, absolutely. There is a lot of things that have shocked me here. I just look at the way there is an effort to strip people off their voting rights. I never thought something like that could happen in the US. If you are not from the US, this being the place where democracy has existed for such a long time, I just would not have imagined that was even possible. I cannot imagine anything like that happening even in a new not so established democracy like South Africa and many other countries, developing countries. So it just shows that all of us have some homework to do in our countries. There's places where we're very strong, but there are places where we have to work on.

But when it comes to women's issues, there are issues that are universal. Violence against women is a universal challenge for all countries, irrespective of their level of development. Underrepresentation of women is a challenge for all countries. And when you think about underrepresentation of women, there is a correlation between underrepresentation of women and slow development in all areas because when you have less women, you do not have fighters inside the room who are continuously pushing the envelope and pushing the agenda.

Ian Bremmer:

Both of these issues you raise, violence against women and underrepresentation of women, both of these things are getting exacerbated with the pandemic.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka:

Oh yes.

Ian Bremmer:

Much more violence against women worldwide especially, and many of them being trapped in homes effectively, environments where they can't escape it. And secondarily, women are absolutely getting hit much worse in terms of unemployment, layoffs, furloughs and all the rest when they're already doing so much of the work in the informal economy. When you look at what's happened with the pandemic and the response, how has that affected your job? How has that affected your outlook on the world for women?

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka:

It's certainly been a setback. I mean, it was not like we had made grand progress, but the limited progress is being compromised. So women in the labor market, we are afraid of a situation where we are going to... We could be going back to a situation where a women's place is at home and a men's place is at work. That needs policy interventions in order for countries to be conscious about not developing an architecture of the labor market that is for men. Girls education, we had made not perfect progress, but it was going the right way in many countries. The many children who did not go back to school after the pandemic in many countries are girls and they have not gone back in some cases because of pregnancies, which is not from consensual sex, increase in trafficking, increase in child marriage. We estimate that about 11 million girls would not go back to school ever after the pandemic, so that's a big setback.

And of course, when we think about women and work, women have lost jobs in such large numbers because they were in the value chain of work in those levels where jobs are not secured, they don't have benefits, they're easy to lay off, they don't have savings if they're in the informal sector to maintain themselves so that they can go back to pre-pandemic economic activity. And part of what is missing there is decent work. If women were mostly in decent work, they would stand a chance of surviving the pandemic. And when we look at fiscal stimulus, we want to see the correlation between how the package has been put together and the response to these issues that are affecting women directly. I must say we're encouraged by the US package. It has a lot of the right things that we've seen.

Ian Bremmer:

I was just about to ask you, with all the trillions of dollars being spent, including 1.9 trillion just approved in the United States, I mean this is bigger than any kind of fiscal expansion in the US frankly since World War II. So I mean, it's wonderful to hear you say that you think that this has actually been done in an intelligent way. Talk a little bit about what you think it's doing that's targeted in a way that's going to be useful to address this huge hit that women have taken here in the United States.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka:

The fact that it is going to enable women to continue to have food. This basic thing when it's not there at home, it's a woman's headache, that it's going to enable women to be able to keep roof over their head, again, another big problem for women. But only about 10% of the packages that have come out since the start of the pandemic have had a dedicated window that addresses the issue of women. So we are continuously engaging with governments about repurposing their packages so that they can respond to women. In the developing countries, in Sub-Saharan Africa for instance, the packages are not that big, but there is something, and in those countries, the women are in the informal sector and because the informal sector is made up of business that are not registered, not always easy to have a follow through with, they really fall between the cracks and the informal sector is just too big in Africa and in Asia to fall between the cracks.

Ian Bremmer:

It does matter of course for the economic sustainability of these countries for the long term especially. So when you and your team then go to some of the poorest countries in the world and tell them, "You're really missing this," are they listening to you? I mean, are you making progress with them?

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka:

Well, modest progress. I wish we were making much bigger progress, but yes, there are governments that are listening. Countries in Latin America, for instance, who already were more inclined to embrace social protection, to pay attention to the burden of care. They already had a template to augment and to reach out to women. After all, one of the best countries when it comes to supporting women in social protection and unpaid care is Uruguay. They have led a coordinated effort in the region to make sure that we do that. So after we come out of the pandemic, as we begin even now to ramp up for recovery, we have a campaign which is Generation Equality, which was meant to be bringing the younger generation in taking the unfinished business that was started in Beijing forward. That is now dominated by what we do to fix what has been identified as a result of the pandemic, both the underlying issues that were there even before the pandemic and what has been caused by the pandemic.

So in Generation Equality, we are actually demanding that countries identify the areas that they are going to be addressing and fixing, and they actually put a budget in it. But we are saying it doesn't have to be just the countries and member states alone. So we've brought in private sector, we've brought in civil society, we've brought in philanthropic organization, so we are creating what is the first of its kind, a coalition across the board for gender equality. The first leg of pulling together what these offering of these coalitions are going to be is happening in Mexico. At the end of this month, we will come out of CSW having debated that and then go to Mexico and package that.

And then we will be running around calling for more people to sign up, to declare the commitments that they're willing to make. And at the end of June in Paris, we will then come up with almost our kind of a Marshall plan for women, to see what we can do. And you know a lot about women. In conflict areas, I see you really cover that area very well. You can imagine how difficult it is for women who are either displaced and women who are conflict affected. We are also trying to look at how this package of ours will bring in more agency to the women in those areas.

Ian Bremmer:

One thing I do talk about a lot on this show is climate and how young people have such a different view on climate. They're so much more interested in responding to it, they prioritize it much more. It's about the future. Are you seeing, are younger people of both genders thinking differently about gender relations and rights and equality in your view? Is some of this just where it is going to change demographically because these people are just not going to tolerate the behaviors of the 1950s style men anymore?

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka:

Definitely, the younger generation has refreshing radical impatience, which really helps. Even in this coalition that I'm talking about, it's been so good to have the young people because everyone is on an equal platform. Member states, young people, sports people, private sector, and everybody, and the young people have really been pushing and creating real agency. But on climate, definitely, they are giving it much more serious attention. And girls in particular, certainly girls are much stronger on climate and they're just stronger leaders, period. It's refreshing to see that happen. We still have residues of chauvinism and boys who do not identify with the thinking that is progressive, but it's much better than the guys of my generation, that's for sure. Definitely much better.

Ian Bremmer:

I mean, look, it may seem like a small issue in the context of the pandemic, but before the pandemic hit, I'm just thinking about women's soccer and how you had these spokeswomen that suddenly were like, "No, no. Why are we doing this and you're going to pay us one fifth, one tenth of what the guys make. Are you absolutely kidding me? It's not entertaining? I'm not worth anything?" And growing up, I couldn't have imagined women doing that in that space. And suddenly, it was the most obvious and natural thing. And that to me feels generational.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka:

We have a goodwill ambassador of ours, Marta da Silva, Brazil. And if you see what she earns compared to her male counterpart who don't even feature in the ranking of people who have scored goals, you really realize how unfair it is. And she trains just as hard. She does everything that you're required to do in order to be an elite athlete.

Ian Bremmer:

And it's a good place for us to come together because I think one of the biggest turning points in coming out of the pandemic is going to be the successful hosting, God willing, of the Olympics in Tokyo this summer. So maybe we can see some more of that with everybody together.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka:

Yeah, no, definitely. We're hoping and also encouraging, and I'll give a shout-out to the International Olympics committee, we will have 49% women participating in the sports. That is really phenomenal. They've come a long way, and of course by the time they go to the next, the Olympics after Tokyo, they definitely would've reached 50%. So I'm quite glad, and it's encouraging to see how serious they're taking the issues.

Ian Bremmer:

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, so nice to see you, so appreciate the work that you're doing and thanks for being on GZERO World.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka:

Thank you so much for having me.

Announcer 3:

That's it for today's edition of the GZERO World Podcast. Like what you've heard? Come check us out at gzeromedia.com and sign up for our newsletter signal.

Announcer 2:

The GZERO World Podcast is brought to you by our founding sponsor, First Republic. First Republic, a private bank and wealth management company, understands the value of service, safety and stability in today's uncertain world. Visit firstrepublic.com to learn more.

Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.