Uppsala authorities find that the pandemic has changed social work objectives

Gender equality has suffered and that needs to be redressed in the future

The Municipality of Uppsala released today its annual report on gender equality for 2020. As it might have been expected, in a year heavily marked by lockdowns and social isolation, its results show that gender equality and women’s rights and freedoms have suffered due to the increase in domestic violence. Unfortunately, this is likely the case in most of the world.

The authorities in the Swedish city have stated that this is a cause for concern and they would like to act accordingly, by shifting the focus of social work activities in order to address these challenges.

The pandemic has placed its toll not only in the economic sphere but also in the social one

There are several ways in which the pandemic has affected gender equality.

• Groups that were far from the labour market even before the pandemic have fallen even further behind, including foreign-born women and women with disabilities.
• Those who already had some kind of mental illness before, have felt even worse due to the pandemic, including girls and LGBTQ people.
• Those who needed extra support at school have not been able to get as good support, something that affects boys to a greater extent and their ability to meet the knowledge requirements.
• Violence against women (and children) has increased.

The gender equality report is designed not only to show the current state of affairs in that field but also to throw light on the areas where things can be changed in order to promote and strengthen gender equality.

“Some of the important efforts we make to increase gender equality have been the establishment of an honour resource team with special expertise on honour-related violence and the project "Femme" where women with a foreign background receive training in property management for one year. However, we need to do more,” said Mohamad Hassan (L), 1st Deputy Chairman of the Municipal Board and Chairman of the Gender Equality Council.

He added: “We need to take action against men's violence against women, strengthen preventive work to detect violence in close relationships earlier and counteract the obstacles that exist so that vulnerable groups can come out on their own”.