UNDP Press conference 3 March 2021

[Other language spoken]

I think we should start.

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Thank you very much for joining.

It's a very exciting briefer.

We're going to discuss a new report that calls for the immediate introduction of a gender based temporary basic income to cover the Paris and most vulnerable women in developing countries.

The TBI report, as we call it, is offered by Arroa Santiago, who is the gender specialist on economy, on economic development, on UNDP gender, gender team.

The second offer is Eduardo Ortiz Juarez, researcher at King's College London.

And the third offer is Maria Montoya, Montoya Aguirre, a graduate researcher at Paris School of Economics.

Our speakers today are Raquel Lagunas, director of UNDP gender team, and George Grey Molina, who is UNDP chief economist.

My colleague Leslie will manage the Q&A.

Make sure please, because she doesn't know you, to introduce yourself and your media house when asking question.

Raquel, the floor is yours.

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Wait, we need to open your mic and Enrico is going to do it.

No worries, it's coming.

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Thank you to all of you for joining us in a very special day.

As seen in the report, UNDP is calling to introduce the temporary basic income specifically for women as a short term solution to address the shock that women are experiencing in developing countries during the pandemic, the coronavirus pandemic.

So you may be asking yourself, isn't everyone going through hardship during this crisis?

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But why TBI is especially targeting women is very simple the answer and the answer is because women need it more.

So why they need it more?

TBI and getting an income to to to go through some economic security.

Well first of all women are losing income and leaving the labour market at highest speed than men at greater rate than men.

Women are also taking a greater share of unpaid care and domestic work.

As you all may know, they are losing their income as well their autonomy over the lives.

I wanted to give you.

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Worldwide, women do about 12.5 billion hours of unpaid care work every single day, so which amounts to almost 11 trillion a year in terms of earnings.

You know that women are overall represented in many other industries hitted by coronavirus.

So at a food service, retail and entertainment, just to give you again a flavour, women face a huge potential loss of earnings.

Some estimates predict that 51% loss because they have to also take care of the children without any payments.

So when the the the the times comes to make decisions on who goes to the labour market, women stay at home.

So I want also to flag the the aspect of poverty.

Even before the pandemic, women were 25% more likely than men to live in poverty, in extreme poverty.

So we will have in 2021, we will have 118 women aged between 25 and 35 years in extreme poverty for every 100 men for the same age.

Yes, to also make the point on the comparative and why we are targeting women.

You all know very well the race of domestic violence because of coronavirus and how women are trapped by abusive relationships at home with fewer, fewer options to escape.

So we call this the shadow pandemic.

When women receive an income, they have more opportunities to make decisions and leave the the the house or leave the relationship.

So we want to just to flag and I will give now the floor to my colleague George Grey that we are UNDP is very concerned with the backsliding threatened to reverse more than 10 years of progress on gender equality.

So I wanted to ask now, George, please, if you wanted to explain the temporary basic income.

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Thank you so much, Raquel.

What I will do is I'll touch upon three issues.

What is our TBI offer in more detail?

Second, how can governments pay for this initiative?

And 3rd, what do we expect to achieve in the short run?

So let me start with the first point.

What is the offer?

A temporary basic income, as you know, is an unconditional cash transfer.

It provides income support for people who fall through the cracks of the formal social safety net, informal sector workers, self-employed workers, domestic workers, unpaid care workers who do not benefit from work furloughs, unemployment insurance systems, tax departments or other policy measures that we've seen in many of the advanced economies.

So the TBI temporary basic income proposed by UNDP varies from country to country.

It's equivalent to half or 50% of the value of the median income in each country with a floor of $57 per month PPP with purchasing parity prices, which is the $1.90 PPP day poverty line extrapolated for 30 days.

So what the median does is it corrects for inequality in a country and the floor corrects for the basic achievement above the poverty line.

We do some numbers for three scenarios the governments can employ.

In the first scenario, we reach all of those women under the poverty line.

That's 613 million women costing $51 billion or 0.07% of GDP every month.

Income support programmes have typically been rolled out for a six month period, so we do the math for six months as well As for nine months and 12 months.

In a second scenario, we expand the reach beyond the poverty line to to what is called a vulnerability line, which is above the poverty line.

That would be 1.32 billion women costing $134 billion, or 0.18% of GDP per month.

The third scenario we expanded to reach all women between the ages of 15 and 64, a universal TBI, to reach 2.03 billion women in 132 countries, costing 231 billion PPP, or 0.31% of GDP.

So how do these figures translate to what women would receive, cash in hand?

Again, this depends on the country, but as I said before, it's about half the median income with no one receiving less than $57 per month.

So for example, in Zambia, where the median income is 287 per year, the expectant TBI will be $57 per month.

In lower middle income country like Morocco, the TBI will be a little higher, it'll be $120.00 per month, and in an upper middle income country like Thailand it will be about $180 per month.

Now, is this a large amount or a small amount?

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Women do about $12.5 billion of unpaid work every day, which amounts to $11 trillion a year.

So a $300 billion emergency transfer does not seem that large in comparison.

Developing countries will also be paying $1.1 trillion of long term debt service in 2021, about 850 billion on capital, 250 billion on interest rate payments.

Again, a $300 billion transfer for six months is within reach.

So let me turn to the second point.

How can governments pay for this?

We suggest three possible ways of paying for the TBI.

One is restructuring.

Restructuring any existing income support measures to focus specifically on women.

As you know, many countries reached a peak in April and May and are now unwinding their income support programmes.

Our message is as you unwind, focus on those most in need, in this case working age women, who make a vast proportion of the population that are in a situation of unequal pay, unequal labour participation and unpaid labour.

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Second, channelling funds from existing budgets, especially as more low income countries receive fiscal support and three, use funds already set aside for debt repayment.

The Third Point that we wanted to make is, well, what would a TBI achieve now?

We believe a temporary basic income for women is urgent and fair.

A daily income for women right now allows millions to help survive the crisis before vaccinations are in place, which in the developing world is on a horizon to 2022-2023.

A daily income provides financial autonomy over women's own lives, opening bank accounts controlled by them and enrolling in government social assistance or social insurance schemes if they exist.

Does ATBI for women act as a disincentive for women rejoining the labour force?

And the short answer is no, because the policy is temporary and mirrors the reality of partially closed labour markets right now.

But the longer answer is that female labour participation rates themselves are more affected by occupational gender biases or unpaid gender care roles than they are by a cash transfer or temporary basic income.

We believe that rather than race to the bottom, and by lowering social protection until incentives kick in for women to rejoin the labour force, we should aim to race to the top with policies that address the structural inequalities behind this unequal playing field.

Let me pass it over to my colleague Raquel again to focus on the way forward.

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We wanted to also talk to you about UNDP views in terms of long term investment.

So in the context of the upcoming International Women's Day that is next week, we also think that PDI, which means economic security can play a role in helping SWIFT the power between women and men.

The next day, International Women's Day is about women's leadership.

So women's in every single space of public life.

So in our view, in the long term, in the long run, we definitely need a stronger democracies.

The time for women to have a seat at the table is long overdue.

So we need women at all levels of decision making.

We need governments making bold decisions about the quotas, promotion of quotas and temporary special measures.

Just to give you an example of 1 area that we think is deeply connected to to to the economic economic development.

So the second area in the long term that needs some reform and some rethinking is our economic model.

We need to find a more inclusive economic system, building the bridge within production in the in the more traditional way and the production of life in the more traditional way.

So we are talking in UNDP definitely about going beyond income, including and proposing alternatives CDP that account for care work and social environmental costs.

Of course, for instance, one very concrete measure can be counting and paid care in the national account accounting systems.

There is a long list of of changes that we wanted to promote in in our relationship with governments.

We need to transform social norms that are at the bottom and the root of inequalities through fiscal policies, through for instance, parental leave, taxation benefits, public transfers and definitely we wanted to promote developing universal social and care services.

So I wanted to to to finish by saying that this is one in generation terms respond also to climate emergency and the biodiversity crisis.

So again, connected to our economic model, we need to value not only productive for monetized work, also the work of invisible work of women taking care of, of conservation and caring for natural resources.

So I will stop here and now we go to the Q&A.

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Thank you very much, Raquel and George, we'll open the floor for any questions.

If you want to raise your hand, I'll call on you.

Or if you just want to jump in right now, maybe raise your hand, I think because we have to unmute your mic.

Are there any questions about TBI or about women?

So I'll, I'll, I'll ask a quick question then to, to Raquel, you mentioned, you mentioned the, the stressors that are that women are facing right now with the temporary basic income support.

Could you explain why it's important to target women specifically and not and maybe not men at this time?

Or is that not the the way to view this?

So if we keep in mind the role of women in the household, for instance, you know how women are many times connected and taking care of their own families of the child.

We know also that there are many female household, female head of households.

There is a big, big number of women leading by themselves in developing countries with, with coronavirus and, and taking care also of the elderly.

So because they play this, this role of, of the, of this, of, of taking care of the family and, and, but also they are very proactive, not in communities.

They are the first responders helping and creating associations and community based groups responding to coronavirus.

The, the impact and the effect that is can have the TBI is going to multiply the benefits.

So I, it's not only about getting an instrumentalistic approach.

It's also a matter of who needs more the, the, the income.

And as I said, and we we were mentioning going through numbers, women are the most excluded and in the worst position right now in the labour market, not only the formal labour market, also in the informal.

So 80% of women are domestic workers, just to give you an example, they lost their jobs.

So 60% of, of, of, of income they lost.

So they are, they are in, in, in the, in the labour market, formal and informal in the most vulnerable jobs and they receive the less, less wage.

So I think there are enough reasons to target women with the TBI measure.

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I don't see any hands.

So maybe what we'll do, George, if you have any final thoughts and Raquel, if you have final thoughts, then we can do that and we'll wrap.

And if anybody has any questions, please, please let me know.

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I think just as Raquel mentioned an an important point to make is that coming into this crisis 12 months ago, women already faced the gap of labour participation with respect to men.

That gap has widened through the crisis.

Second, women already faced a salary gap with men prior to the crisis.

That gap has also widened the the balance between paid unpaid work within the household has also widened during the crisis.

So as we see this continuous widening of gaps, the question is how do we address a crisis but also build a bridge to something that is structural.

And I think that Raquel mentioned very well, this is not a silver bullet, but this is a way of tending a bridge, of sending a bridge and saying during this crisis as we unwind other income support measures, let's keep an income support measure that focuses on working age women because of these both structural and also new inequality gaps.

I think that's what motivates a lot of the discussion in the developing world today.

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Raquel, do you have any final thoughts?

I think that made very good points and very strong points.

We are, we think that definitely this is an opportunity and we see opportunities to implement new measures and and be creative in terms of crisis.

The windows are open to to take more awareness of inequalities, but also experiment somehow with new measures that can come by.

At the beginning be short term win wins, but in the long term the reflection is about which kind, which type of society do we wanted to have, which kind of social contract are we looking for?

And this is a way to start building some steps to ensure that governments and states response for all and and the horizon is reduce inequalities and get a threshold for everybody of wealth being.

I will stop here.

Thank you very much.

I don't see any questions, but if there are any questions in the coming hours, please let me know.

And I want to thank everybody for joining us.

And I want to thank George and Raquel in particular.

And we'll be speaking to everybody soon.

Thank you very much, everyone.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you, Raquel.